Post-traumatic stress disorder, also known as PTSD, is a debilitating disease. A specific type of criteria should be and is defined for this kind of mental disease. The American Psychiatric Association does a great job of doing this. But wouldn’t it be great if we decided to explore the criteria for PTSD diagnostic criteria in the words below? That is exactly what we are doing!
Defining PTSD
Before defining PTSD criteria, we should try to define what exactly PTSD is. As we have mentioned before, PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder, is a debilitating disease that affects millions of people who go through trauma that relates to an extremely stressful situation or an extended period of a traumatic experience by virtue of being part of it or witnessing it somehow.
Affected individuals have a hard time coping with the symptoms of PTSD, which range from persistent visions of the traumatic event and relentless nightmares to severe anxiety and uncontrollable thoughts about the same even making it extremely debilitating. Let’s find out more about PTSD criteria in the next section, now that we have an understanding of what it is.
The DSV-5 Criteria for PTSD
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is to a greater extent responsible for setting up the criteria for PTSD, which as the PTSD diagnostic criteria have been revised in the fifth edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) (which also defines something like psychosis), which was again revised in the year 2022 but diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder remained the same even after the 2022 change.
According to the APA, the points that you see below are required for the diagnosis of PTSD, which essentially summarizes the diagnostic criteria:
- Diagnostic PTSD Criteria 1 (1 Point Required)
An affected individual was exposed to (a) death, threatened death, or (b) actual or threatened serious injury that could have also caused that death, or (c) actual or threatened sexual violence, in the following way(s):
- Direct exposure to the scenarios above
- Witnessing the trauma of the scenarios above
- Learning that the trauma happened to a close relative or close friend via the scenarios above
- Indirect exposure to the trauma, for example through professional duties (e.g., first responders, medics) that relate to the scenarios above.
- Diagnostic PTSD Criteria 2 (1 Point Required)
The traumatic event is persistently re-experienced by the sufferers, in the following way(s):
- Unwanted and intrusive memories that are also upsetting at the same time
- Nightmares of the re-experiences and traumatic reminders
- Flashbacks & Visions
- Emotional distress happening due to exposure to traumatic reminders
- Physical reactivity that takes place due to exposure to traumatic reminders
- Diagnostic PTSD Criteria 3 (1 Point Required)
Avoidance behavior where the affected individual tries to evade much of trauma-related stimuli after the trauma, in the following way(s):
- Trauma-related thoughts or feelings
- Traumatic reminders
- Diagnostic PTSD Criteria 4 (2 Points Required)
Negative thoughts or feelings that start or are exacerbated by a traumatic event or experience, in the following way(s):
- Inability to recall key features of the trauma aka brain fog
- Overly negative thoughts and assumptions about oneself or the world
- Exaggeratedly blaming oneself or others for causing the trauma
- Exacerbated Negative affect
- Anhedonia – a sharp decrease in activities that one felt were interesting previously (something that is common in depression)
- Isolation and social anxiety
- Difficulty experiencing any type of positivity
- Diagnostic PTSD Criteria 5 (2 Points Required)
Trauma-related arousal and reactivity that started or got worse due to a traumatic event, in the following way(s):
- Aggression or irritability
- Destructive and risky behavior
- Hypervigilance stemming from paranoia related to the traumatic event
- Heightened reactions related to being startled
- Difficulty focusing or concentrating
- Worsening sleep patterns
- Diagnostic PTSD Criteria 6: Symptoms that have been lasting for a month or so.
- Diagnostic PTSD Criteria 7: Symptoms that have been lasting for a month or so.
- Diagnostic PTSD Criteria 8: Symptoms that are capable of creating distress or functional impairment, for example, social or occupational.
- Diagnostic PTSD Criteria 9: Symptoms that are not there due to medication, substance use, or other illnesses.
All of these criteria for PTSD diagnosis can also be specified in two different ways: Dissociative and delayed.
Dissociative specification of the PTSD criteria happens when an individual experiences high levels of either depersonalization (feeling of detachment from oneself) or derealization (break from reality aka psychosis).
Delay-specified criteria for PTSD are applied when the diagnostic PTSD criteria mentioned above have happened after 6-months away from when the traumatic event happened. There are also PTSD unspecified criteria and PTSD duration criteria but these are out of scope for now.
Wrap Up!
We hope you have under the PTSD criteria in detail now as it can help you gauge if you or your loved one has this. If it is a treatment like psychotherapy or telehealth psychiatry that you need, then Inland Empire Behavioral Group and not just for PTSD for other mental health problems such as OCD.
