How Common is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as currently defined, is caused by an overwhelming event outside the range of ordinary human experience, such as combat, a natural disaster, or a physical assault. The symptoms include nightmares and other forms of re-experiencing the traumatic event, avoidance of situations and activities that arouse memories of the event, emotional numbness and detachment, pessimism, sleep problems, impulsive anger, jumpiness, and difficulty in concentration. Although the disorder has received much attention, a recent survey of the general population suggests that it is rather rare, even among the Vietnam combat veterans with whom it is prominently associated. Twenty-five hundred St. Louis residents were interviewed. Fifteen percent of both sexes had had some of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress, especially nightmares and jumpiness, but fewer than one percent had ever had the full syndrome of PTSD. Certain symptoms, such as emotional numbing, were very rare.
