PTSD is not the only mental illness that starts after a trauma. In this episode, you'll learn to

recognize its core symptoms. Welcome to the Carlet Psychiatry podcast, keeping psychiatry

honest since 2003. I'm Chrisaken, the editor-in-chief of the Carlet Psychiatry Report.

And I'm Kelly Newsom, a psychiatric MP and a dedicated reader of every issue.

This month, the American Journal of Psychiatry published an update on PTSD, Biaria Shalev,

and colleagues from NYU.

It's an important topic, so we'll take a deep dive into that article in this podcast series.

PTSD is part of a select club of DSM diagnoses whose criteria require an external cause.

The others are acute stress disorder, which means you have PTSD-like symptoms for less than one month after a trauma, while PTSD requires more than a month. And adjustment

disorder, which captures various psychological symptoms that come on after a stress, but that are not prominent or numerous

enough to meet criteria for another DSM disorder.

And there's another one in the newest edition of DSM, Prolonged Grief Disorder, which

actually includes some PTSD-like symptoms, but centers around a sense of unresolved attachment to the deceased.

But defining these disorders by their causes has led to some confusion, most notably the tendency

to diagnose any problem that happens after a trauma as PTSD,

or any psychological symptoms after bereavement as prolonged grief disorder.

Not so.

As we'll get into here, PTSD is a unique reaction.

Trauma can cause nearly every syndrome in the DSM. Trauma can cause PTSD, but it can also cause depression, bipolar disorder, or opioid use disorder. And sometimes it can cause both, where people

will have PTSD along with another mental illness, and both of them could have been

triggered by a trauma. There is also an understandable tendency to blur the distinction

between stress and trauma. Trauma is a type of stress, but it's a more specific type, and I know

...