Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

A disaster — whether natural, such as an earthquake, cyclone or tsunami, or man-made, such as war — causes serious disruption to the normal functioning of a society, bringing about material or environmental loss on a scale that cannot be handled with the resources immediately available. The trauma an individual experiences during such an event can range from simply perceiving that the disaster is happening to being directly and life-threateningly caught up in it. Either kind of experience can, in some people, lead to the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) — a condition in which the person keeps re-experiencing the traumatic event, sometimes long after it has ended, through flashbacks and overwhelming, intrusive thoughts about what happened. This condition leaves a person emotionally disturbed, and unable to draw on healthy, adaptive coping strategies in the course of ordinary daily activitie …