I have worked over many years with victims of torture, rape, institutional abuse and deprivation as well as those who have suffered serious traumatic events in the course of their ‘ordinary’ lives. I have had the privilege to work with individuals, families and communities in rural Ireland, inner-city settings in the UK, various countries in Africa, Asia and New Zealand. I have come to the conclusion that the assumptions involved in the concept of PTSD: hyponarrativity, commitment to a cognitivist/computational model of mind and an inbuilt linear approach to psychological time mean that it cannot capture the complexity of human responses to traumatic events. Because of these implicit assumptions, the discourse of PTSD serves to individualise and decontextualise human suffering. In doing this, it distorts the way in which we understand healing and recovery.

The psychiatric diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has become increasingly popular since it was first introduced in the American Psychiatric Associations’ Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) in 1980. In the four decades since, it has become the established way of conceptualising how human beings respond to hurtful life events, and its usefulness is rarely questioned.

It is not only used in psychiatry, psychology and psychotherapy but it now has a central role in various legal domains including the determination of claims for asylum and personal injury disputes.  PTSD is often referenced in lay discussions and media debates about traumatic events of various kinds.

But the concept of PTSD does not do justice to the reality of human suffering and can serve to obscure, rather than illuminate the nature of healing and recovery.

PTSD Decontextualises Experience