Psychobiology of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Book excerpt: Less than twenty years ago the field of mental health did not have the language to describe the long-term consequences of traumatic stress. In the absence of specific biological markers, the psychological symptoms of trauma survivors were often attributed to neurotic or even psychotic disorders. But in 1980, after more than a century of clinical observations, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was recognized as a diagnosis. By the 1990s, biological findings began to provide objective validation that PTSD is more than a politically or socially motivated conceptualization of human suffering. This volume summarizes the latest findings in this rapidly changing field, including the biological differences between PTSD, stress, and other psychiatric disorders Chief among the findings is that PTSD is a different disorder than was originally thought, and that the biology of PTSD is not simply the biology of stress. Topics include the empirical basis for post-traumatic stress disorder; psychobiological findings; neurodevelopmental effects of trauma; neurological basis of traumatic and non-traumatic memory impairment in post-traumatic stress disorder; how basic research informs clinical observations; and the psychobiology of treatment.