Usefulness and validity of post-traumatic stress disorder as a psychiatric category

I am not too surprised to discover that 6 weeks after the helpful
article by Mezey and Robbins, 8 September 2001,
there have been only 3 rapid responses listed.
Further, those replies highlight the basic controversy, does PTSD even
exist?

After the small storm of replies to Summerfields article earlier this year
the battle lines were clearly plotted for all to view, consider and
attack.

Psychiatrists are trained to listen to what their patients say to them and
interpret what they communicate. How often do we disbelieve those who
describe auditory hallucinations?
When did any of us last accuse a patient of deliberately lying about their
paranoid delusions?

So why can we not listen to what people say who have experienced major
events in their lives? They describe their distressing symptoms in the
hope that we will provide some explanation, reassurance and,hopefully,
relief from them. To prejudge, using our own concepts of normal suffering,
is at best unethical and at worst blatant discrimintaion.

Please can we stop arguing over the reality of our patients needs and
start doing something to help them.