You can’t have posttraumatic stress disorder without a traumatic event. This may sound a little trivial, but in fact there are moves by some to try to broaden posttraumatic stress disorder to include all manner of symptoms following all manner of things. For example psychological sequalae after being fired, or after sexual innuendo. Now there may well be psychological sequelae after those sort of things in some cases, but I think it does a dis-service to people who suffer from the syndrome I’m about to describe to broaden the term to include a more usual sort of distress after a more usual sort of stressors.

So what sorts of stressors are we talking about. Well, DSM’s definition puts it like that and I think that is a good a definition as any. Generally, we’re talking about events outside the usual range of human experience that would be distressing to almost everyone.

What sort of things, well sort of all the really bad sudden and often personal tragedies that happen in the world. And I’ve already shown you pictures of some of them.

Probably motor vehicle accidents comprise the most common example But other injuries or accidents, rapes, assaults.