Can We All Stop Overusing the Term PTSD?

Hard-hitting Lily Casura of the excellent site, HealingCombatTrauma.com, recently forwarded an interesting story for consideration by her readers. It was by John Omaha at Truthout, called, "PTSD Nation." Although I bet John and I would agree on many things, and the narrative is interesting, I'm compelled to jump up and down on this story.

He argues that the entire nation of the United States experiences the same symptoms listed in the DSM-IV psychotherapy manual under Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). At first glance, it looks like it could be a satire of the DSM process, which it should be. Instead, it's an historical overview of how America has collectively suffered, avoided remembering its trauma, then recalled that trauma, etc. Why was the story so popular that people barraged the site with overflowing compliments and re-posted it to their Facebook accounts? Collective traumas and denials are real, I believe that, but why use the PTSD label? See, now I'm compelled to shout here. Look at me, I'm shouting in the coffeehouse and everyone's looking at me like I French-kissed a squirrel. Ahem ...

Why has the psychology community evolved so slowly as to have such broad and simple definitions of "trauma" and "post-traumatic stress disorder?" Shouldn't there be very distinct channels distinguishing the experience of someone who took shrapnel to the head from a roadside bomb, someone who was forced to kill another to save others, a refugee who's been tortured, a social worker who's been exposed for ten years to stories of domestic violence, and someone who is sad from watching the nightly news?

Without these distinctions it's starting to seem like everyone, all the drama queens of the world, are trying to claim they have post-traumatic stress disorder as if it were a merit badge. The title survivor is something we softies need to feel like we are perceived as being stronger than we really are, I imagine.

Now the whole nation has it according to Omaha? Doesn't that trivialize all the individual experiences? Many people can sort the nuance, but there are probably many others who still cannot see how different it is for a soldier or refugee or aid worker who's been bombarded for months at a time and their own experience with a car accident at age sixteen. So many of those who suffer in war or even a factory fire or something only to have people around them downplay it, as if it was not that big of a deal compared to what they've gone through.

Surely, everyone, ev-ery-one, has been traumatized by something from child birth to a heart murmur to a lost parent to a car accident to a building fire, or whatever. So why use the same terminology also for people who spend a year or two or ten with the threat of being blown apart, or for people who are forced to choose whether to kill someone to save others? I'm obviously not a trained psychotherapist, but shouldn't the next generation of the DSM-IV (DSM-V?) be more specific to clarify the very distinct channels of the post-trauma experience? Shouldn't journalists be more careful how they throw around "PTSD"?

(By the way, those who may remember my story on "war video game PTSD" are probably wondering if I misused the term myself back then. I'm considering whether I have. When I applied it, I was talking about if a player buries himself in a war game for 5-8 hours at a time over a period of years, whether the physiological hyper-vigilance combined with the graphic imagery might contribute to something like PTS after they've finally thrown the game down. The studies posed whether there was an association when such a player has already experienced violence before playing the game, so the images recall violent memories. The jury's still out on that one.)

Photo credit: Daniel J Gerstle (Laasqoray, Somalia)