Post-traumatic stress disorder
psychiatric disorder that developed after experiencing or witnessing a terrifying or life-threatening event
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental disorder that develops from experiencing a traumatic event. Examples include sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, warfare along its associated traumas, natural disaster, bereavement, traffic collision, or other traumatic events on a person's life or well-being. Symptoms may include disturbing thoughts, feelings, or dreams related to the events, mental or physical distress to trauma-related cues, attempts to avoid trauma-related cues, alterations in the way a person thinks and feels, and an increase in the fight-or-flight response. These symptoms last for more than a month after the event and can include triggers such as misophonia. Young children are less likely to show distress, but instead may express their memories through play.
Most people who experience traumatic events do not develop PTSD. People who experience interpersonal violence such as rape, other sexual assaults, being kidnapped, stalking, physical abuse by an intimate partner, and childhood abuse are more likely to develop PTSD than those who experience non-assault based trauma, such as accidents and natural disasters. In the United States, about 3.5% of adults have PTSD in a given year, and 9% of people develop it at some point in their lives. In much of the rest of the world, rates during a given year are between 0.5% and 1%. Higher rates may occur in regions of armed conflict. It is more common in women than men.
“Post-traumatic stress disorder” enters the record as psychiatric disorder that developed after experiencing or witnessing a terrifying or life-threatening event. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Post-traumatic, stress and disorder can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Post-traumatic stress disorder” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Post-traumatic, stress and disorder provides the most credible route into that argument.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q202387. The Library of Congress control number is sh85105424. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Post-traumatic stress disorder” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.