Horwitz PTSD

A Short History
Erscheinungsjahr 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4214-2640-2
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 0 Seiten, Format (B × H): 140 mm x 216 mm

Reihe: Johns Hopkins Biographies of Disease

A comprehensive history of PTSD.

Post-traumatic stress disorder—and its predecessor diagnoses, including soldier’s heart, railroad spine, and shell shock—was recognized as a psychiatric disorder in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The psychic impacts of train crashes, wars, and sexual shocks among children first drew psychiatric attention. Later, enormous numbers of soldiers suffering from battlefield traumas returned from the world wars. It was not until the 1980s that PTSD became a formal diagnosis, in part to recognize the intense psychic suffering of Vietnam War veterans and women with trauma-related personality disorders. PTSD now occupies a dominant place in not only the mental health professions but also major social institutions and mainstream culture, making it the signature mental disorder of the early twenty-first century.

In PTSD, Allan V. Horwitz traces the fluctuations in definitions of and responses to traumatic psychic conditions. Arguing that PTSD, perhaps more than any other diagnostic category, is a lens for showing major historical changes in conceptions of mental illness, he surveys the conditions most likely to produce traumas, the results of those traumas, and how to evaluate the claims of trauma victims.

Illuminating a number of central issues about psychic disturbances more generally—including the relative importance of external stressors and internal vulnerabilities in causing mental illness, the benefits and costs of mental illness labels, and the influence of gender on expressions of mental disturbance—PTSD is a compact yet comprehensive survey. The book will appeal to diverse audiences, including the educated public, students across the psychological and social sciences, and trauma victims who are interested in socio-historical approaches to their condition.

Praise for Allan V. Horwitz’s Anxiety: A Short History

“The definitive overview of the history of anxiety.”—Bulletin of the History of Medicine

“A lucid, erudite and brisk intellectual history driven by a clear and persuasive central argument.”—Social History of Medicine

“An enlightening tour of anxiety, set at a sensible pace, with an exceptional scholar and writer leading the way.”—Library Journal

Autoren/Hrsg.

Horwitz, Allan V.

Fachgebiete

• Medizin | Veterinärmedizin Medizin | Public Health | Pharmazie | Zahnmedizin Medizin, Gesundheitswesen Geschichte der Medizin
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Foreword, by Charles E. Rosenberg
Preface

Chapter 1. A Disorder through Time 1
Chapter 2. PTSD Emerges
Chapter 3. The Psychic Wounds of Combat
Chapter 4. Diagnosing PTSD
Chapter 5. The Return of the Repressed
Chapter 6. PTSD Becomes Ubiquitous
Chapter 7. Implications

Notes
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Horwitz, Allan V.
Allan V. Horwitz (PRINCETON, NJ) is the Board of Governors and Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology and the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research at Rutgers University. He is the author of DSM: A History of Psychiatry's Bible, PTSD: A Short History, Anxiety: A Short History, and Creating Mental Illness.

Allan V. Horwitz is a Board of Governors and Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University. He is the author of Anxiety: A Short History, Creating Mental Illness, and The Loss of Sadness: Psychiatry’s Transformation of Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder.