Opinion and Debate: Post traumatic stress disorder: Is it under or over recognized in clinical practice?

According to observations, in the western world, posttraumatic stress disorder (ptsd) is being liberally diagnosed as either axis i diagnosis or an adjunct morbidity. many a times, the magnitude of an event, faced by a particular patient, is much more trivial and not falling into the category as per the manual for psychiatric diagnoses. the kinds of events that can trigger ptsd were traditionally limited to the most violent and frightening situations, such as being involved in a plane crash, a shooting incident, or the collapse of a building after an earthquake or bomb. the main source of such trauma is war, and in north america the largest category of ptsd sufferers are vietnam war veterans. much of what we know about this syndrome comes from studies involving former soldiers.