Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Definition
A recognised psychological disorder that can follow exposure to traumatic events including criminal victimisation. Diagnostic criteria include intrusive re-experiencing, avoidance, negative mood and cognition changes, and hyperarousal, persisting beyond one month.
- Trigger
- Exposure to a traumatic event, including criminal victimisation
- Symptom clusters
- Intrusion, avoidance, negative mood/cognition, hyperarousal
- Duration threshold
- Symptoms persisting beyond one month
- Relevance
- Recognised outcome assessed in victim support and impact evaluation
Common questions
Why does the one-month duration threshold matter diagnostically?+
Acute stress reactions in the days after trauma are common and often resolve on their own, so the diagnostic threshold exists to separate a normal short-term response from a persistent disorder that is unlikely to resolve without intervention.
How is PTSD relevant beyond clinical treatment in a criminal case?+
Victim impact statements and sentencing can take a documented PTSD diagnosis into account as evidence of harm, and in some jurisdictions it factors into compensation claims or civil damages, making accurate diagnosis relevant to legal outcomes as well as treatment.
Related terms
- Acute Stress Disorder (ASD)
- A trauma-related disorder diagnosed when intrusion, avoidance, negative mood and arousal symptoms appear within a month of a traumatic event and last...
- Institutional Betrayal
- Harm that occurs when an institution a person depends on for safety, such as a police force, a court, a school or...
- Just-World Hypothesis
- The belief, described by Melvin Lerner, that the world is fundamentally fair and that people generally get what they deserve, which can...
- Post-Traumatic Growth
- Positive psychological change reported by some survivors as a result of struggling with a highly challenging event, alongside, not instead of, ongoing...
- Repeat Victimisation
- The empirical pattern in which a small proportion of people or locations experience a disproportionate share of violent incidents. Domestic violence shows...
- Resilience
- A stable trajectory of relatively low psychological disturbance in the months after a traumatic event, without a period of clinical disorder.
- Restorative Justice
- A process in which the victim, the offender, and relevant community members meet with a trained facilitator to discuss the harm caused,...
- Secondary Victimisation
- Additional harm caused to a victim through the process of reporting and investigation, such as disbelief, insensitive questioning, or retraumatisation. Fear of...
- Victim Impact Statement
- A written or oral account submitted by a victim (or victim's family) describing the physical, psychological, financial, and social effects of the...
- Victimology
- The sub-field of criminology that studies crime victims: their characteristics, the victim-offender relationship, the impacts of victimisation, and the adequacy of legal...
Explained in these topics
- Psychological and Physical Impact of VictimisationA trauma-related disorder with the same core symptom clusters as ASD, diagnosed when those symptoms persist beyond one month after the traumatic event.
- Victim Rights, Support, and the Impact of Crime