The point of this is not to diminish the impact of people’s subjective experiences rather, that a definition that runs the spectrum from rape, torture, and combat violence all the way seeing something distressing on TV may not be clinically useful. Anthropologist Allan Young called this “PTSD of the virtual kind” (quoted in McNally, 2009). Some of this controversy came out of 9-11, where people were diagnosed with PTSD after seeing news footage of the collapse of World Trade Center, even though they didn’t know anyone who died or were endangered. People such as Harvard’s Richard McNally have criticized the current parameters of what can be considered a traumatic antecedent as being too broad. There is no post traumatic stress disorder without a trauma. PTSD is pretty unique among diagnoses in that the definition requires an external event (criterion A) that other diagnoses-such as depression and other forms of anxiety-do not. It’s not certain that the proposed changes will make it in there, but they provide some interest food for thought. The September issue-I know this post is a little late, it got caught up in editing-features an article on changes that are being considered for diagnosing PTSD in the upcoming DSM-5.
As a member of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America (ADAA), I receive their monthly journal Depression and Anxiety.
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