Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2015
Disciplines
Arts and Humanities
Abstract
Following the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, trauma experts feared that as much as a quarter of the population of New York City needed psychological treatment. In the spirit of emergency aid, counselors offered Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD), a one-session procedure in which those in shock are encouraged to air their emotions and advised of symptoms of PTSD likely to appear in the future. Evidence from controlled trials, however, suggests that CISD does not promote recovery and sometimes hinders it, presumably by cueing the symptoms of PTSD in the process of warning about them. For some, the CISD ritual seems only to raise expectations of PTSD which then come to life. Evidently the notion that PTSD lies in wait for those exposed to trauma is now familiar enough that not only therapists but people at large commonly find it intuitive. But how did the entity known as PTSD become so familiar? How did “PTSD” become a household word?
Rights
© 2015 Stewart Justman
Recommended Citation
Justman, Stewart, "Trauma for Everyone: How PTSD Became the Malady of Millions" (2015). Global Humanities and Religions Faculty Publications. 37.
https://scholarworks.umt.edu/libstudies_pubs/37