[HPforGrownups] OT: PTSD

[Caius Marcius]

No: HPFGUIDX 11107

Message: 7
   Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 17:17:25 +0100
   From: Monika Huebner <monika at darwin.inka.de>
Subject: Re: OT: PTSD

On Sun, 28 Jan 2001 09:26:18 -0000, "Jim Ferer" <jferer at yahoo.com>
wrote:

>You forgot one of the diagnostic criteria: if your attorney tells you
>you have it. I know PTSD is real, but I've been soured on it. I handle
>lawsuits in my work (the risk management side of safety/risk
>management) and I've seen allegations of PTSD from people with a
>broken arm. It's God's gift to the plaintiff's bar. And the setting of
>diagnostic criteria is not just a sceintific, but an ideological and
>political act as well.

Yes, of course you are right.

In my own profession (working with psychiatrically disturbed children), I
see few diagnoses applied in a more haphazard and sloppy way than PTSD.  It
tends to get automatically slapped on any child where sexual abuse is
suspected, no matter how flimsy the pretext.  For example, an 18-year-old
girl now on my caseload came to me two years ago with a PTSD diagnosis.  The
reason?  - when she was nine years old, her school bus driver was accused
(never convicted) of inappropriately fondling another child who rode her
same bus. There's no evidence that the driver ever approached her, and this
girl has never exhibited any of the symptoms of PTSD in her life, yet
carried the diagnosis for seven years until she came to us.  That's the most
ridiculous example in my experience, yet I know of other cases where abuse
undoubtedly took place, yet the child was not traumatized by the experience
to the point of developing PTSD symptoms.  In other words, PTSD does not of
necessity strike every trauma victim.

 I doubt JKR will bother to induce PTSD in Harry - why should she, when the
mere approach of the Dementors create a virtual PTSD within him?

     - CMC