Response to stress is not necessarily pathological

EDITOR,--Beverley Raphael and colleagues' critical examination of the value of debriefing after psychological trauma focuses primarily on treatment after single disasters but could be extended to the wide range of psychological treatments offered to victims of current wars.1 The failure of the concept of post-traumatic stress disorder to embrace the complexity of the experiences of suffering and loss in these situations has been addressed by other authors,2 including me.3 The treatment strategies that follow in its wake are equally problematic. They rest on an assumption of a …