Traumatic Stress

Traumatic stress is the result of a cascade of events and reactions that begin with exposure to traumatic stressor(s) and progresses from normative adaptive acute stress reactions to functional impairment due to maladaptive acute or posttraumatic stress symptoms. Stressful life events (stressors) are events or experiences that evoke biological adaptations (acute stress reactions) to avoid, escape, neutralize, or recover from actual or threatened harm events or experiences that are potentially traumatic stressors are those that confront a person—or an entire community or society directly, or as a witness, with actual or potential death, debilitating injury, or violation of bodily integrity including, but not limited to, events in which physical trauma (i.e., severe damage to the body) occurs. To be an actual traumatic stressor, the event(s) ...