Anxiety disorders are a group of mental disorders characterized by significant and uncontrollable feelings of anxiety and fear such that a person's social, occupational, and personal functions are significantly impaired. Anxiety may cause physical and cognitive symptoms, such as restlessness, irritability, easy fatigue, difficulty concentrating, increased heart rate, chest pain, abdominal pain, and a variety of other symptoms that may vary based on the individual.
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental and behavioral disorder that develops from experiencing a traumatic event, such as sexual assault, warfare, traffic collisions, child abuse, domestic violence, or other threats on a person's life or well-being. Symptoms may include disturbing thoughts, feelings, or dreams related to the events, mental or physical distress to trauma-related cues, attempts to avoid trauma-related cues, alterations in the way a person thinks and feels, and an increase in the fight-or-flight response. These symptoms last for more than a month after the event and can include triggers such as misophonia. Young children are less likely to show distress, but instead may express their memories through play. A person with PTSD is at a higher risk of suicide and intentional self-harm.
Psychological trauma is an emotional response caused by severe distressing events, such as bodily injury, sexual violence, or other threats to the life of the subject or their loved ones; indirect exposure, such as from watching television news, may be extremely distressing and can produce an involuntary and possibly overwhelming physiological stress response, but does not produce trauma per se. Examples of distressing events include violence, rape, or a terrorist attack.
Acute stress reaction (ASR), also known as psychological shock, mental shock, or simply shock, and acute stress disorder (ASD), is a psychological response to a terrifying, traumatic, or surprising experience. Combat stress reaction (CSR) is a similar response to the trauma of war. The reactions may include but are not limited to intrusive or dissociative symptoms, and reactivity symptoms such as avoidance or arousal. It may be exhibited for days or weeks after the traumatic event. If the condition is not correctly addressed, it may develop into post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Sensory overload occurs when one or more of the body's senses experiences over-stimulation from the environment.
Complex post-traumatic stress disorder is a stress-related mental and behavioral disorder generally occurring in response to complex traumas.
Stress-related disorders constitute a category of mental disorders. They are maladaptive, biological and psychological responses to short- or long-term exposures to physical or emotional stressors. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences categorizes Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as stress-related disorders. However, the World Health Organization's ICD-11 excludes OCD but categorizes PTSD, Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD), adjustment disorder as stress-related disorders.
Traumatic stress is a common term for reactive anxiety and depression, although it is not a medical term and is not included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The experience of traumatic stress include subtypes of anxiety, depression and disturbance of conduct along with combinations of these symptoms. This may result from events that are less threatening and distressing than those that lead to post-traumatic stress disorder. The fifth edition of the DSM describes in a section titled "Trauma and Stress-Related Disorders" disinhibited social engagement disorder, reactive attachment disorder, acute stress disorder, adjustment disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
A trauma trigger is a psychological stimulus that prompts involuntary recall of a previous traumatic experience. The stimulus itself need not be frightening or traumatic and may be only indirectly or superficially reminiscent of an earlier traumatic incident, such as a scent or a piece of clothing. Triggers can be subtle, individual, and difficult for others to predict. A trauma trigger may also be called a trauma stimulus, a trauma stressor or a trauma reminder.
Memory and trauma is the deleterious effects that physical or psychological trauma has on memory.
Derealization is an alteration in the perception of the external world, causing those with the condition to perceive it as unreal, distant, distorted or in other words falsified. Other symptoms include feeling as if one's environment is lacking in spontaneity, emotional coloring, and depth. Described as "Experiences of unreality or detachment with respect to surroundings in the DSM-5, it is a dissociative symptom that may appear in moments of severe stress.
PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder, is a psychiatric disorder characterised by intrusive thoughts and memories, dreams or flashbacks of the event; avoidance of people, places and activities that remind the individual of the event; ongoing negative beliefs about oneself or the world, mood changes and persistent feelings of anger, guilt or fear; alterations in arousal such as increased irritability, angry outbursts, being hypervigilant, or having difficulty with concentration and sleep.
Childbirth-related post-traumatic stress disorder is a psychological disorder that can develop in women who have recently given birth. This disorder can also affect men or partners who have observed a difficult birth. Its symptoms are not distinct from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It may also be called post-traumatic stress disorder following childbirth (PTSD-FC).
Emotional abandonment is a subjective emotional state in which people feel undesired, left behind, insecure, or discarded. People experiencing emotional abandonment may feel at a loss. They may feel like they have been cut off from a crucial source of sustenance or feel withdrawn, either suddenly or through a process of erosion. Emotional abandonment can manifest through loss or separation from a loved one.
Anxiety buffer disruption theory (ABDT) is an application of terror management theory to explain an individual's reaction to a traumatic event, which leads to post traumatic stress disorder. Terror management theory posits that humans, unlike any other organism, are uniquely aware that death is the inevitable outcome of life. When thoughts of death are made salient, such as when a terrorist attack carries those thoughts into the level of consciousness, humans are subject to debilitating anxiety unless it can be "buffered." Humans respond to the anxiety and dread mortality salience produces by clinging to their cultural worldview, through self-esteem and also close personal relationships. Cultural worldviews, with their cultural norms, religious beliefs and moral values infuse life with meaning. They give life a feeling of normalcy and also a feeling of control. There is no way to definitely prove one's cultural worldview, there they are fragile human constructs and must be maintained. Clinging to a cultural worldview and self-esteem buffer the anxiety connected to thoughts of mortality. When thoughts of death are salient, humans are drawn to their cultural world view which "stipulates appropriate social requirements, and standards for valued conduct, while instilling one's life with meaning, order and permanence."
The genetic influences of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are not understood well due to the limitations of any genetic study of mental illness; in that, it cannot be ethically induced in selected groups. Because of this, all studies must use naturally occurring groups with genetic similarities and differences, thus the amount of data is limited. Still, genetics play some role in the development of PTSD.
Ulysses syndrome is an atypical set of depressive, anxious, dissociative, and somatoform symptoms that results from being exposed to extreme levels of stress unique to the process of modern migration. Rather than a mental disorder, this syndrome is a natural reaction to toxic levels of stress seen in migrants who are otherwise in normal mental health.
Operational stress injury or OSI is a non-clinical, non-medical term referring to a persistent psychological difficulty caused by traumatic experiences or prolonged high stress or fatigue during service as a military member or first responder. The term does not replace any individual diagnoses or disorders, but rather describes a category of mental health concerns linked to the particular challenges that these military members or first responders encounter in their service. There is not yet a single fixed definition. The term was first conceptualized within the Canadian Armed Forces to help foster understanding of the broader mental health challenges faced by military members who have been impacted by traumatic experiences and who face difficulty as a result. OSI encompasses a number of the diagnoses found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) classification system, with the common thread being a linkage to the operational experiences of the afflicted. The term has gained traction outside of the military community as an appropriate way to describe similar challenges suffered by those whose work regularly exposes them to trauma, particularly front line emergency first responders such as but not limited to police, firefighters, paramedics, correctional officers, and emergency dispatchers. The term, at present mostly used within Canada, is increasingly significant in the development of legislation, policy, treatments and benefits in the military and first responder communities.
Functional somatic syndrome (FSS) is any of a group of chronic diagnoses with no identifiable organic cause. This term was coined by Hemanth Samkumar. It encompasses disorders such as fibromyalgia, chronic widespread pain, temporomandibular disorder, irritable bowel syndrome, lower back pain, tension headache, atypical face pain, non-cardiac chest pain, insomnia, palpitation, dyspepsia and dizziness. General overlap exists between this term, somatization and somatoform. The status of ME/CFS as a functional somatic syndrome is contested. Although the aetiology remains unclear, there are consistent findings of biological abnormalities, and major health bodies such as the NAM, WHO, and NIH, classify it as an organic disease.
Race-based traumatic stress is the traumatic response to stress following a racial encounter. Robert T. Carter's (2007) theory of race-based traumatic stress implies that there are individuals of color who experience racial discrimination as traumatic, and often generate responses similar to post-traumatic stress. Race-based traumatic stress combines theories of stress, trauma and race-based discrimination to describe a particular response to negative racial encounters.
