There's a reason for that... because there is no such valid diagnosis as complex PTSD.
... According to the APA's current DSM.
Within the limits of that qualification, the statement is (tautologically) correct.
That tautology may, or may not tell us something which is valid in the real world.
There is no evidential basis available for what gets into the DSM, versus what does not get in.
Neither the submissions made to the committee, nor the committee deliberations are made available for outside examination.
Without access to data, there is no basis for a scientific argument, it is therefore currently an eminence based assertion rather than evidence based theory.
No engineer, chemist, physicist nor geologist (ie real scientist who's work can be tested) would ever accept a theory without seeing both strong evidence to support it, and finding no evidence falsifying it.
Straight off the bat, I can give you examples of several currently accepted paradigms, when they had single figures of adherents. Those paradigms are accepted on the basis of their ability to explain real world observations. If their acceptance had depended on the votes of the eminent members of a committee, behind closed doors... I think our world would be a much more primitive place.
The none geocentric universe - had two proponents, Copernicus and Gallileo. Gallileo recanted after being accused of heresy.
Continental drift (which was incorporated into plate tectonics - the unifying theory of earth sciences, in the late 1960s- early 1970s) was down to only one high profile advocate in the mid 20th century, Arthur Holmes, Professor at Durham.
Priestly, the discoverer of oxygen, despite the evidence which he himself collected, never deviated from his belief in the "phlogiston" paradigm of combustion.
It is now 52 years since Thomas Kuhn, published "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions". A work which the Psychiatric associations appear to remain amazingly impervious to.
Please, let's remember, the categories which get called "conditions" are tools of thought. We group similar things together to try to identify other similarities between them. Those groupings might have more or less usefulness for explaining the real world and how it works.
We can group round things together
and as sub groups we can group together things which bounce very well in one group and things which don't bounce so well in another.
The group of round things could contain rubber balls, glass marbles and peas
The group of things which bounce very well would only include the rubber balls
While the peas and glass marbles are all round and in the sub category of things which don't bounce very well - it does not imply that they are the same things in all other ways.
The categories which we use here, are the same, they may be more or less useful in explaining the real world, but please, let's not get hung up on criticizing the territory for not following what the map says it should be.
There are other potential paradigms out there. Traumatologist John Briere, for example has joked that if C-PTSD were given its full recognition, then the DSM would be reduced from its current doorstop thickness to a thin pamphlet.
Given that a number of eminent members of the APA, and the association itself, gain considerably from the compilation and prestige of the DSM, and that many specialities and research grants are supported on the basis of categories within the DSM, and billions of dollars annually in medications and the approval of new medications is predicated on the DSM.
It would be very easy (and not scientific) to present a conspiracy case for the secrecy surrounding the compilation of the DSM and for C-PTSD being omitted.
However it is on the basis of evidence that we should be working, and I would argue that there are probably more contributors to this site, than all of the members of the DSM committees have seen PTSD cases in their working lives.
Even half an hour of looking around the forum will dispel a number of popular myths.
I'm not going to diminish or be-little anyone's trauma and life experiences - but a look at the disparity of posts between military and emergency services as the source of trauma - compared to sexual abuse (there's about a hundred fold disparity in posts) gives some indication of the distribution of PTS traumas in society at large.
A look at what researchers are looking for participants to take part in shows that the funding is skewed in the opposite direction (predominantly military), and that the weight of published papers will reflect that bias.
Anyway - I'll wrap up. hopefully I've made the point that the world and the contributors to this board are far more interesting than the DSM. I believe it would be a huge mistake to try to make the territory of posters here arbitarily conform to the (possibly incorrect) map presented in the secretively compiled DSM.
Arguably, we are likely to be discovering more about PTS and its effects on individuals, here, than has ever been previously known.
