Post-traumatic stress disorder

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental disorder that can develop after exposure to trauma. It involves persistent intrusion, avoidance, negative changes in mood or thinking, and heightened arousal.

Fear conditioning: A learning process in which a previously neutral cue comes to predict danger and elicit fear. Trauma can make reminders of danger trigger learned fear responses.
Prolonged exposure therapy: A cognitive behavioral treatment that uses repeated, structured engagement with trauma memories and safe reminders. It directly addresses avoidance and helps patients learn that reminders are not current threats.
Trauma: An experience or series of experiences that causes profound distress or overwhelms a person's capacity to cope. Exposure to traumatic events is the prerequisite context for PTSD.
Railway spine: A nineteenth-century diagnosis for persistent symptoms following railway accidents, often attributed to nervous-system injury. It shows that post-trauma symptoms were recognized before modern PTSD terminology.
Risk factors for post-traumatic stress disorder: Characteristics and circumstances associated with a higher probability of developing PTSD after trauma. No single factor predicts reliably who will develop PTSD after exposure.
Extinction learning: Learning that a previously threatening cue no longer predicts harm, without erasing the original association. Difficulty updating threat associations can help sustain fear after danger has passed.
Cognitive processing therapy: A structured therapy that helps people examine and revise unhelpful beliefs related to trauma. It focuses on guilt, blame, and other trauma-related beliefs that maintain distress.
Intrusive memory: An involuntary recollection that enters awareness, often with vivid sensory or emotional details. Unwanted recollections are a defining intrusion symptom in PTSD.
Shell shock: A term used during and after World War I for psychological and physical symptoms among combatants. It brought combat-related trauma into public and medical debate.
Resilience: The capacity to adapt or recover amid adversity, stress, or trauma. Many exposed people do not develop PTSD, making resilience central to understanding outcomes.

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