What is PTSD?

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may arise following exposure to a traumatic event or series of events that involve a real risk to human life, such as an operational event, battle, terrorist attack, car accident, difficult birth or pregnancy, robbery, sexual assault, violence, abandonment, burning, and more. The event does not have to be extreme according to objective standards, it is enough to cause terror.

Trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder can affect a person in various ways. The effects and manifestations vary from person to person based on genetic load, environment, diet, and more. Among the effects are changes in the structure and functions of areas of the brain, damage to connectivity between areas of the brain, damage to the immune system, nerves, cells, metabolic and endocrine systems. Moreover, these changes have been proven to be transmitted genetically to future generations, increasing the sensitivity to traumatic events and the likelihood of developing PTSD following exposure to traumatic events (Yehuda et al., 2015).