Psychological trauma

Psychological trauma (also known as mental trauma, psychiatric trauma, emotional damage, or psychotrauma) is an emotional response caused by severe distressing events, such as bodily injury, sexual violence, or other threats to the life of the subject or their loved ones; indirect exposure, such as from watching television news, may be extremely distressing and can produce an involuntary and possibly overwhelming physiological stress response, but does not always produce trauma. Examples of distressing events include exposure to violence, sexual assault or rape, childhood abuse, the death of a loved one, or mass casualty events such as terrorist attacks or natural disasters.

Short-term reactions such as psychological shock and psychological denial typically follow. Long-term reactions and effects include flashbacks, panic attacks, insomnia, nightmare disorder, difficulties with interpersonal relationships, emotional dysregulation, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and brief psychotic disorder. Physical symptoms including migraines, hyperventilation, hyperhidrosis, and nausea are often associated with or made worse by trauma.

People react to similar events differently. Most people who experience a potentially traumatic event do not become psychologically traumatized, though they may be distressed and experience suffering. Some will develop PTSD after exposure to a traumatic event, or series of events. This discrepancy in risk rate can be attributed to protective factors some individuals have, that enable them to cope with difficult events, including temperamental and environmental factors, such as resilience and willingness to seek help.

Psychotraumatology is the study of psychological trauma.