Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

A disorder affecting individuals who have experienced a psychologically traumatizing event which is characterized by reexperiencing the event through recurrent and intrusive recollections or dreams of the event, or the sudden feeling that the event was recurring; numbing of responsiveness or reduced involvement with the external world beginning sometime after the trauma; and/or one or a combination of other symptoms including hyperalertness or exaggerated startle response, sleep disturbance, guilt about surviving if others have not, memory or concentration impairment, avoidance of memories that recall the trauma and intensification of symptoms when exposed to events that symbolize or resemble the trauma.