A Nosological Exploration of PTSD and Trauma in Disaster Mental Health and Implications for the COVID-19 Pandemic
1
The Altshuler Center for Education & Research, Metrocare Services, Dallas, TX 75247-4914, USA
2
Department of Psychiatry, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX 73090-9070, USA
3
VA North Texas Health Care System, Dallas, TX 75216, USA
4
Metrocare Services, Dallas, TX 75247-4914, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Behav. Sci. 2021, 11(1), 7; https://doi.org/10.3390/bs11010007
Received: 2 December 2020
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Revised: 31 December 2020
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Accepted: 1 January 2021
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Published: 8 January 2021
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Disasters, Diagnosis, and Distress: Multiple Perspectives, Populations, and Methodologies)
The coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic rapidly spread around the world, resulting in massive medical morbidity and mortality and substantial mental health consequences. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an important psychiatric disorder associated with disasters, and many published scientific articles have reported post-traumatic stress syndromes in populations studied for COVID-19 mental health outcomes. American diagnostic criteria for PTSD have evolved across editions of the manual, and the current definition excludes naturally occurring medical illness (such as viral illness) as a qualifying trauma, ruling out this viral pandemic as the basis for a diagnosis of PTSD. This article provides an in-depth nosological consideration of the diagnosis of PTSD and critically examines three essential elements (trauma, exposure, and symptomatic response) of this diagnosis, specifically applying these concepts to the mental health outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic. The current criteria for PTSD are unsatisfying for guiding the response to mental health consequences associated with this pandemic, and suggestions are made for addressing the conceptual diagnostic problems and designing research to resolve diagnostic uncertainties empirically. Options might be to revise the diagnostic criteria or consider categorization of COVID-19-related psychiatric syndromes as non-traumatic stressor-related syndromes or other psychiatric disorders.
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Keywords:
COVID-19; pandemic; disaster; psychiatric disorders; posttraumatic stress disorder; nosology; psychiatric diagnosis criteria; trauma; exposure
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
North, C.S.; Surís, A.M.; Pollio, D.E. A Nosological Exploration of PTSD and Trauma in Disaster Mental Health and Implications for the COVID-19 Pandemic. Behav. Sci. 2021, 11, 7. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs11010007
AMA Style
North CS, Surís AM, Pollio DE. A Nosological Exploration of PTSD and Trauma in Disaster Mental Health and Implications for the COVID-19 Pandemic. Behavioral Sciences. 2021; 11(1):7. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs11010007
Chicago/Turabian StyleNorth, Carol S., Alina M. Surís, and David E. Pollio. 2021. "A Nosological Exploration of PTSD and Trauma in Disaster Mental Health and Implications for the COVID-19 Pandemic" Behavioral Sciences 11, no. 1: 7. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs11010007
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