Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Issues and Controversies

doi:10.1136/bmj.330.7501.1215

BMJ 2005;330:1215 (21 May), doi:10.1136/bmj.330.7501.1215

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Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Issues and Controversies

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

It is not hard to make psychiatric diagnoses. Ask the questions,elicit the symptoms, open the DSM IV, tick the boxes, and youhave it. One set of symptoms means schizophrenia. You don'tneed to think about the cause, which is fortunate, as we don'tknow it. Another set of symptoms and a different set of tickboxes, and then this is depression. Again, the label says nothingabout the cause, which is also fortunate, as it may have beenanything from a long list of psychological, social, or physicalhazards.

Ed Gerald M Rosen

John Wiley &Sons, £24.95/ ${euro}$ 37.50, pp 288 ISBN 0 470 86285 8

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Another set of tick boxes and the label might be post-traumaticstress disorder (PTSD). However, this time the label does indeedspecify the cause: trauma. Out go the intricacies of psychiatricformulation—the complex interplay of genes, early environment,education, . . . [Full text of this article]

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Simon Wessely, director

King's Centre for Military Health Research, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College, London s.wessely@iop.kcl.ac.uk

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