Complex post-traumatic stress disorder
Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) is a stress-related mental disorder generally occurring in response to complex traumas, i.e., commonly prolonged or repetitive exposures to a series of traumatic events, within which individuals perceive little or no chance to escape.
| Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) | |
|---|---|
| Other names | Disorders of extreme stress not otherwise specified (DESNOS), enduring personality change after catastrophic experience (EPCACE) |
| Specialty | Psychiatry, clinical psychology |
| Symptoms | Hyperarousal, emotional over-stress, intrusive thoughts, emotional dysregulations, hypervigilance, negative self-beliefs, interpersonal difficulties, and also often attention difficulties, anxiety, depression, somatisation, dissociation. |
In the ICD-11 classification, CPTSD is a category of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with three additional clusters of significant symptoms: emotional dysregulations, negative self-beliefs (e.g., feelings of shame, guilt, failure for wrong reasons), and interpersonal difficulties. Examples of CPTSD's symptoms are prolonged feelings of terror, worthlessness, helplessness, distortions in identity or sense of self, and hypervigilance. CPTSD's symptoms share some similarities with the observed symptoms in borderline personality disorder, dissociative identity disorder and somatization disorder.
There exist strong relationships between CPTSD and repetitive adverse childhood experiences, especially among survivors of harmful foster care. In fact, the trauma model of mental disorders associates CPTSD with chronic or repetitive: sexual, psychological, physical abuse or neglect, intimate partner violences, bullying, kidnapping and hostage situations, frequent medical issues or long-term hospitalization, natural disasters, indentured servants, slavery or other human trafficking, sweatshop workers, prisoners of war, concentration camp survivors and solitary confinement.
The undergone situations generally last for long periods of time. Besides these, any situations involving captivity or entrapment (i.e., perceived situations lacking of easy and viable escape routes) can lead to CPTSD.