It is remarkable to think that 30 years have elapsed since posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was formally introduced in the 3rd edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III ; American Psychiatric Association, 1980). Many people who were around in 1980, including some who were part of the process of developing the diagnostic criteria, are still in the field. Sadly, others are no longer with us. But their legacy lives on in ways that they probably could never have imagined. Now, 30 years later, we are working on yet another revision of the PTSD diagnostic criteria, for DSM-V. Since the diagnosis was formulated, there has been remarkable progress in understanding trauma and its effects. The field has grown dramatically too. DSM-III generated a marked increase in publications on trauma, a trend that was first reported in JTS in 1992 by Blake, Albano, and Keane. Figure 1 depicts the number of publications on trauma in the PILOTS database (the Published International Literature on Traumatic Stress), presented as a function of their date of publication (personal communication, F. Lerner, November 2, 2009). The number of publications grew over ninefold between 1980-1984 and 1995-1999, from a mere 930 to 8,606.
This growth is due both to the creation of specialty trauma journals such as the Journal of Traumatic Stress as well as an increase of publications on trauma in nonspecialty journals. For example, articles on trauma comprised 16.3% of the publications in the anxiety disorders literature between 1981 and 1985, but had grown to 38.0% of that literature between 2000 -2005(Boschen, 2008)). High profile-events such as the terrorist attacks on 9/11 have contributed to increased public recognition of trauma as well as greater professional interest. The number of articles on disaster increased substantially from the period in the 5 years before 9/11 to the period 5 years after by 145% in specialty disaster journals and 320% in general medical journals, with the largest increase being 2,340% in the New England Journal of Medicine (Kelen & Sauer, 2008). Other high-profile events-the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the bombings in London and Madrid, Hurricane Katrina, and the tsunami in Southeast Asia-have undoubtedly had a similar impact.