Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Issues and Controversies

✍ Scribed by Gerald Rosen

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2004
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 270
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Is Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) an illness that arises after horrific and life-threatening events? Or is it a label that medicalizes human suffering, and brings with it more problems than it solves?

Still a relatively new diagnosis, PTSD has changed our vocabulary and shaped our views on human coping and resilience. Yet almost every assumption upon which the diagnosis rests has come under question. In this volume, Gerald Rosen brings together leading international scholars in posttraumatic studies to consider the most contentious debates. Each chapter offers an analysis of the issues, reviews current research, and clarifies implications for the practicing clinician.

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Issues and Controversies is essential reading for all practitioners, researchers, and students who work in the field of trauma. Professionals in related health fields and the law will also find this book useful.

✦ Table of Contents

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder ISSUES AND CONTROVERSIES......Page 4
Contents......Page 8
About the Editor......Page 10
Contributors......Page 12
Preface......Page 14
Acknowledgments......Page 16
1 Conceptual Problems with the DSM-IV Criteria for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder......Page 18
2 Risk Factors and the Adversity-Stress Model......Page 32
3 Risk Factors and PTSD: A Historian’s Perspective......Page 56
4 Unresolved Issues in the Assessment of Trauma Exposure and Posttraumatic Reactions......Page 80
5 Malingering and the PTSD Data Base......Page 102
6 Psychophysiologic Reactivity: Implications for Conceptualizing PTSD......Page 118
7 When Traumatic Memory Was a Problem: On the Historical Antecedents of PTSD......Page 144
8 On the Uniqueness of Trauma Memories in PTSD......Page 164
9 Memory, Trauma, and Dissociation......Page 180
10 In the Aftermath of Trauma: Normative Reactions and Early Interventions......Page 204
11 “First Do No Harm:” Emerging Guidelines for the Treatment of Posttraumatic Reactions......Page 230
12 Cross-cultural Perspectives on the Medicalization of Human Suffering......Page 250
Index......Page 264