Diagnostic Criteria for Acute Stress Disorder

A. Psychiatric injuries are often diagnosed as acute stress disorders when a person that has been exposed to a traumatic personal injury, such as a Michigan car accident. Diagnostic criteria include:

1. the person expeienced, witnessed, or was confronted with an event that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others. It should be noted that although defense attorneys defending personal injury lawsuits for insurance companies will commonly blame the litigation experience or personal injury lawsuit itself as the “cause” of many stress disorders or psychiatric disorders, there is no medical literature or study that supports these common personal injury lawsuit defense tactics.
2. the person's response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror

B. Psychiatric injuries are often diagnosed as acute stress disorders when an individual has three (or more) of the following dissociative symptoms while experiencing or just after experiencing a traumatic event, such as a Michigan automobile accident:

1. a subjective sense of numbing, detachment, or absence of emotional responsiveness
2. a reduction in awareness of his or her surroundings (e.g., "being in a daze")
3. derealization
4. depersonalization
5. dissociative amnesia (e.g., inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma)

C. Psychiatric injuries are often diagnosed as acute stress disorders when the personal injury, car accident, etc. is persistently reexperienced in at least one of the following ways; recurrent images, thoughts, dreams, illusions, flashback episodes, or a sense of reliving the experience; or distress on exposure to reminders of the traumatic event.

D. Psychiatric injuries are often diagnosed as acute stress disorders when an individual exhibits marked avoidance of stimuli that arouse recollections of the Michigan car accident (e.g., thoughts, feelings, conversations, activities, places, and people).

E. Psychiatric injuries are often diagnosed as acute stress disorders when an individual exhibits marked symptoms of anxiety or increased arousal (e.g., difficulty sleeping, irritability, poor concentration, hypervigilance, exaggerated startle response, motor restlessness).

F. Psychiatric injuries are often diagnosed as acute stress disorders when the disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning or impairs the individual's ability to pursue some necessary task, such as obtaining necessary assistance or mobilizing personal resources by telling family members about the traumatic Michigan automobile accident experience.

G. Psychiatric injuries are often diagnosed as acute stress disorders when the disturbance lasts for a minimum of 2 days and a maximum of 4 weeks and occurs within 4 weeks of the traumatic Michigan car accident.

H. Psychiatric injuries are often diagnosed as acute stress disorders when the disturbance is not due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse, a medication) or a general medical condition, is not better accounted for by Brief Psychotic Disorder, and is not merely an exacerbation of a preexisting Axis I or Axis II disorder.

Psychiatric Injuries | Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Acute Stress Disorder | Adjustment Disorders | Major Depressive Episode