Diagnostic Criteria for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Michigan Auto Law has the largest reported verdicts in Michigan for a post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) claim, a verdict of $1.25 million on a $ 0. defense offer. The Michigan personal injury attorneys at Michigan Auto Law understand how serious these cases can be. These injuries can be common following serious traumatic personal injury accidents, such as large truck accidents or car accident injury cases, both in Michigan and throughout the country.

Diagnostic criteria include:

A. The person has been exposed to a traumatic event, such as a Michigan automobile or semi truck accident, in which both of the following were present:

1. the person experienced, witnessed, or was confronted with an event or events that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others
2. the person's response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror. Note: In children, this may be expressed instead by disorganized or agitated behavior.

B. The Michigan car accident, or other traumatic event causing personal injuries, is persistently reexperienced in one (or more) of the following ways:

1. recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of the Michigan auto accident that cause the psychiatric injury, including images, thoughts, or perceptions. Note: In children, there may be frightening dreams without recognizable content.
2. recurrent distressing dreams of the Michigan auto accident that cause the psychiatric injury. Note: In children, there may be frightening dreams without recognizable content.
3. acting or feeling as if the traumatic Michigan automobile accident that cause the psychiatric injury were recurring (includes a sense of reliving the experience, illusions, hallucinations, and dissociative flashback episodes, including those that occur on awakening or when intoxicated). Note: In young children, trauma-specific reenactment may occur.
4. intense psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic Michigan car accident that cause the psychiatric injury.
5. physiological reactivity on exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic Michigan auto accident that cause the psychiatric injury.

C. Persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the Michigan automobile accident that caused the psychiatric injury and numbing of general responsiveness (not present before the trauma), as indicated by three (or more) of the following:

1. efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings, or conversations associated with the Michigan car accident that caused the psychiatric injury
2. efforts to avoid activities, places, or people that arouse recollections of the Michigan auto accident that caused the psychiatric injury
3. inability to recall an important aspect of the Michigan automobile accident that caused the psychiatric injury
4. markedly diminished interest or participation in significant activities
5. feeling of detachment or estrangement from others
6. restricted range of affect (e.g., unable to have loving feelings)
7. sense of a foreshortened future (e.g., does not expect to have a career, marriage, children, or a normal life span)

D. Persistent symptoms of increased arousal (not present before the trauma), as indicated by two (or more) of the following:

1. difficulty falling or staying asleep
2. irritability or outbursts of anger
3. difficulty concentrating
4. hypervigilance
5. exaggerated startle response

E. Duration of the disturbance (symptoms in Criteria B, C, and D) is more than 1 month.

F. The disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

Specify if: Acute - duration of symptoms is less than 3 months Chronic - duration of symptoms is 3 months or more

Specify if: With Delayed Onset - if onset of symptoms is at least 6 months after the stressor.

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