Criteria for diagnosing PTSD questioned

BELMONT, Mass., March 21 (UPI) -- The symptoms to diagnose post-traumatic stress disorder may need to be reconfigured, U.S. researchers said.

A team of researchers headed by Dr. J. Alexander Bodkin of McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., found the symptoms used to diagnose PTSD -- such as intrusive thoughts, emotional numbing, flashbacks, difficulty sleeping, jumpiness and hopelessness, among others -- are found equally often in depressed patients who have never experienced a major trauma.

The finding, published in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders, raises questions about the validity of the set of symptoms currently used to diagnose PTSD.

"Our findings, along with others previously reported, form a growing body of literature that raises the important question of whether the symptoms of PTSD are necessarily caused by trauma," Bodkin said in a statement.

It appears the symptoms currently attributed to PTSD may be a non-specific group of symptoms widely observed in patients with mood and anxiety disorders, regardless of trauma history, he added.