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Does anyone else have PTSD from different traumatic experiences?

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Your child being sick doesn't make you afraid that you'll die. It's just awful.

Are you afraid of dying after rape/sexual abuse? Or is it just awful? Genuinely asking as I have no experience with this. Also, the "fear" criterion has been excluded from the diagnostic criteria of the DSM-5 for very valid reasons that people deal differently with emotions and not everyone, even with PTSD, experiences this concrete fear.

You can get treatment for stress associated with having a child in the NICU without being diagnosed with PTSD. [...]
What do you feel people can receive with a diagnosis of PTSD that they can't from Adjustment disorder, Other Stress Related Disorder, etc?

This feels backwards. Obviously you can get treatment for stress associated with having a child in the NICU without being with diagnosed PTSD. Not every trauma leads to PTSD. But taking the notion away? Taking the possibility of PTSD developing away?

Adjustment disorder, Other Stress Related disorders.... Criterion B? Flashbacks/Nightmares/etc.?

How many people on here have "complained" they've been misdiagnosed with one disorder or another in the past?

But a good provider will treat the symptoms regardless of the label given.

Very true. But how many people are denied (specific) treatment by insurance because they don't quite fit a diagnosis? This is actual something that has been cautioned with the recent PTSD-related changes going from the ICD-10 to ICD-11 (ICD-11: Fewer PTSD Diagnoses Under New, Stricter Criteria)

Let me ask a different way. The change in criteria is probably related to diagnostic creep and possibly related to financial and legal issues. [...] So I'm just a bit confused why this is an issue for you.

As a biologist, the first part of the quote is just really unsatisfactory, if not upsetting. But as I mentioned, I'm genuinely trying to understand. I'm not trying to be argumentative or confrontational. I'm really just trying to understand the difference between "natural unexpected traumatic death" and "accidental/violent unexpected traumatic death" of someone close from a biological standpoint.

@Sideways Thanks for pointing that out! Very valid points. I'm really not trying to rank diagnoses for worse and better. (it makes me sad you think I actually think that and have that stigma ? )

But, different diagnoses exist for a reason, don't they? True, they're only letters on the medical record. If they don't matter, why do we even bother with them to begin with? Why do Ts and PsyDocs and insurance companies bother with them?
 
What a relief to read this!

The stigma on this thread is palpable. If you have had a “traumatic” experience, and it’s not PTSD, but some other disorder, it’s some other disorder. It isn’t more or less valid. That’s just plain old stigma, that somehow a PTSD diagnosis is more valid than another diagnosis.

I was in hospital once and the lady in the bed next to me had MDD because her husband had died (natural causes). Her suffering? Was no less valid than mine. Just had different letters on her medical file.
I know a lot of people that would prefer "adjustment disorder" because they have limitations in other areas of life if they have a diagnosis of PTSD.

Labels are powerful. People being called bipolar or borderline rather than a person with symptoms of bipolar or borderline. It's a big difference. We identify with our labels and can add a lot of extra feeling around it. Some want a bigger label and some want a smaller one. In the end as much as they try to make this a science it's equally an art in my opinion. If you want to feel better then find someone that you feel is addressing your concerns. A good trauma therapist isn't going to say your experience doesn't count.
 
Are you afraid of dying after rape/sexual abuse? Or is it just awful? Genuinely asking as I have no experience with this. Also, the "fear" criterion has been excluded from the diagnostic criteria of the DSM-5 for very valid reasons that people deal differently with emotions and not everyone, even with PTSD, experiences this concrete fear.



This feels backwards. Obviously you can get treatment for stress associated with having a child in the NICU without being with diagnosed PTSD. Not every trauma leads to PTSD. But taking the notion away? Taking the possibility of PTSD developing away?

Adjustment disorder, Other Stress Related disorders.... Criterion B? Flashbacks/Nightmares/etc.?

How many people on here have "complained" they've been misdiagnosed with one disorder or another in the past?



Very true. But how many people are denied (specific) treatment by insurance because they don't quite fit a diagnosis? This is actual something that has been cautioned with the recent PTSD-related changes going from the ICD-10 to ICD-11 (ICD-11: Fewer PTSD Diagnoses Under New, Stricter Criteria)



As a biologist, the first part of the quote is just really unsatisfactory, if not upsetting. But as I mentioned, I'm genuinely trying to understand. I'm not trying to be argumentative or confrontational. I'm really just trying to understand the difference between "natural unexpected traumatic death" and "accidental/violent unexpected traumatic death" of someone close from a biological standpoint.

@Sideways Thanks for pointing that out! Very valid points. I'm really not trying to rank diagnoses for worse and better. (it makes me sad you think I actually think that and have that stigma ? )

But, different diagnoses exist for a reason, don't they? True, they're only letters on the medical record. If they don't matter, why do we even bother with them to begin with? Why do Ts and PsyDocs and insurance companies bother with them?
Rape often has fear of death baked into it. If you fight hard enough they could kill you. Sometimes they threaten to do so.

I mentioned fear because the amygdala identifies a threat which activates the threat response whether it's flight, fight, or freeze. (or fawn, which isn't recognized consistently for PTSD as a thing but I personally think it's valid for childhood attachment trauma) The threat response might trigger reactive anger but it's coming from the amygdala.

I'm still not really sure how this conversation is meant to help you. A good therapist can work with insurance to treat trauma whether it leads to PTSD or not. How does it serve your personal recovery to protest this or tease out the difference in physiological response for unexpected natural death vs violent or accidental? You said yourself people have different ways of dealing with emotion so I doubt you could really study something like that. At the end of the day there's a festering wound that needs healing whatever we call it. Maybe you're like me - I can talk myself in circles, analyze things, but sometimes that's a way to avoid the emotions and sitting with ambiguity and all that super hard stuff.
 
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Are you afraid of dying after rape/sexual abuse? Or is it just awful?

There you have another problem with rape, though...

In that it can be a prelude to other crimes, turn out ugly if the rapist decides the victim poses risk to them or reacts differently than their wishes for them are, end in death with resisting, have the rapist be a sadist, anything along those lines.

Thats not even starting on situations where the rape(s) are just a collateral, the pft nothing of the day, one before lunch and two after it.

So even without the fear of death by rape? The risks are there.
 
I would say that secondary motivation is an unfortunate consequence of the diagnostic process that takes away from treatment. That's the reality of financial benefit etc being tied to these labels. Most people just want to feel better and want to understand why they are struggling. That isn't every person's full motivation. I don't actually agree with the DSM cronies on how they changed the criteria, but I definitely understand trying to neutralize secondary gain so resources can be focused on the people that just want to feel better.
 
I'm really not trying to rank diagnoses for worse and better. (it makes me sad you think I actually think that and have that stigma ? )
I think your personal situation? Is more complex. Because you already have additional labels. But for some reason, there is something about having, or not having, the ptsd label that you seem to be taking on, almost as though it’s determinative of the validity of your suffering. I certainly don’t think you’re any kind of bigot if that’s what you’re worried about.

I think it is the case that in “the label feels validating” discussions, which occur here regularly, that there’s an underlying stigma going on there. Why is suffering more or less valid depending on whether you get this label?

That’s rhetorical. I don’t know. And I think it’s just something to be aware of. Anxiety? Depression? They put people in hospital. People take their own lives as a consequence of those illnesses every day of the week. They’re incredibly debilitating illnesses to have. Oftentimes they are situational - as in, they have been triggered by external events out of that person’s control.

And people with other mental illnesses? Often meet a whole stack of criteria B stuff. PTSD doesn’t have a monopoly on nightmares and intrusive memories.

The lady with MDD in the bed beside me? I have no doubt she was having debilitating nightmares and intrusive memories that were preventing her from functioning. What she had experienced with her husband dying? Was traumatic. And she was bedridden and hospitalised as a result.

The science we have available though? Suggest the things going on inside her brain? Were different. That’s it. Nothing at all to do with validity suffering or how bad her experience was. I had experience type A, which screwed up my amygdala, she had experience type B, which screwed up her brain in a different way. And Criteria A? Is nothing more than our best current effort to distinguish why the brain is impacted differently between the two.
 
For what it's worth and for the record, I REALLY wasn't thinking about validity of suffering or underlying stigma or how bad/or not bad experiences were. I didn't have that subjectivity attached to my initial question.

I was really genuinely interested in the reasoning behind the adjustment of the criteria from inclusive (there gotta have been reasons for that) to exclusive (there gotta have been reasons for that). From a sheer scientific standpoint. How it affects, or doesn't affect, our brains. Because otherwise it's arbitrary and/or due to secondary motivations.

And because, if at the end off the day all that doesn't matter and those are just labels on a med file, why is it always so fast to be pointed out how x, y, z does not cause PTSD when it comes up. Even if that doesn't rank different diagnoses as worse or less or devalues the suffering - why comment on it? Why say "You don't have PTSD, but you could have Adjustment disorder, or MDD, or GAD, or..."? As if it was a BAD thing if the person was misdiagnosed with PTSD. So.... if all this doesn't matter...why does it seem to matter?
 
As if it was a BAD thing if the person was misdiagnosed with PTSD. So.... if all this doesn't matter...why does it seem to matter?

Treatment differences.

We actually care for their suffering, very darn much... and do not want these people to lose years or decades of their life not getting the proper care, for their actual situation.

So yeah. It is a bad thing to be misdiagnosed... where there could be relief for folks already.
 
Treatment differences.

We actually care for their suffering, very darn much... and do not want these people to lose years or decades of their life not getting the proper care, for their actual situation.

So yeah. It is a bad thing to be misdiagnosed... where there could be relief for folks already.

AHA!

Person xyz meets all criteria B-F. But person xyz does not meet Criterion A after DSM-5. They would under DMS-4. They would under ICD-10. But not under DSM-5. So in conclusion, they don't have PTSD.

A good T doesn't care. Obviously. But insurance providers do. Disability does.

That is my whole point. Because OBVIOUSLY misdiagnoses are a bad thing. But diagnosing (and hence, treatment) becomes really tricky when the goal posts move. Or different diagnostic criteria exist (e.g. DSM-5 vs. ICD-10/11). Really damn high chance of misdiagnoses and then mis-treatment.

Obviously we need to advance. Our understanding, knowledge grows and we need to adjust. But I'm just having a really hard time understanding the (scientific) reasoning behind an exclusive -> inclusive -> exclusive development.
 
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My opinion? It isn't scientific. It's political. The core symptoms didn't change. It's a pendulum swing that mirrors the larger society going to an extreme, realizing too many negative consequences, then overcorrecting.

These are large institutions and they behave as such.

There is science at the core of it, but when they meet they have committees that argue for and against changes and at the end of the day it's basically a popularity contest I suspect. Soft science shouldn't pretend to be hard science. They should go back to embracing the soulfulness of what psychology originally was in my opinion. Get out of the politics into the heart and soul.

Guess how much insurance wants to support that idea.
 
That is my whole point. Because OBVIOUSLY misdiagnoses are a bad thing. But diagnosing (and hence, treatment) becomes really tricky when the goal posts move. Or different diagnostic criteria exist (e.g. DSM-5 vs. ICD-10/11).

But the goal post has always changed and will always change. [ETA: We used to call PTSD "shell shock" and thought only veterans that went to war had it. And that was only, what? The 50s, 60s, and/or 70s]. As we learn more about science, the brain, how trauma impacts the brain, and just overall mental health. That is why the DSM and ICD are updated. Because we learn more as time goes on. We do more studies and get more concreate answers out there. So, what we may thought caused PTSD actually doesn't. Will that change the treatment? Well yes, as it very well should. Why treat someone for one thing when they have a complete other thing?
 
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