Harry has PTSD

[Caius Marcius]

No: HPFGUIDX 124992


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "bbkkyy55" <bbkkyy55 at y...> 
wrote:
> 
> catportkey suggests Harry has PTSD.  
> 

While Harry displays some of the diagnostic criteria of PTSD as 
described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American 
Psychiatric Association, he most emphatically fails to display one 
crucial symptom: that is, an intense desire to avoid 
thoughts/recollections of the traumatic event. Harry, by contrast, 
wants to shout Voldemort's return from the rooftops.

OOP begins with Harry going through elaborate pains to attempt to 
eavesdrop on the evening news to overhear news of Voldemort. Someone 
suffering from PTSD would have taken pains to avoid hearing the news. 
Throughout OOP, Harry is quick to proclaim the fact that Voldemort is 
back, even when it is to his personal detriment to do so (e.g., in 
his confrontations with Delores). The only sign of reluctance to 
discuss Voldemort is at the first meeting of the DA, but that's only 
because he (not without reason) feels everyone is there merely to 
gawk at him. But when even so unsympathetic an interviewer as Rita 
Skeeter queries him, he is more than happy to relate the whole saga.

Bottom line - being a fictitious character, Harry has those elements 
of PTSD that help advance the plot (e.g., the hypersensitivity, the 
outbursts of intense emotion), but fails to manifest those symptoms 
which would not.

   - CMC