Acute Mental Illness Brought On By A Traumatic Event

[kingdmforahorse]

I have a character, I'll call her Elena for now, who I need to develop an acute mental break after witnessing one of her good friends being abducted for the slave trade and nearly being taken herself. The story roughly takes place in 16th century Poland and she's about 18 years old

Comments

[de_ruh]

I haven't read the responses above me, so please forgive me if I don't have anything new to add.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can occur after a single traumatic event, such as the one you have described, as long as the event involved actual or perceived risk/threat of injury or death to self or others. (In some cases, PTSD can also be developed by hearing about the traumatic death of a loved one.) PTSD would also fit your required symptoms quite well.

There are two points I would like to make before I continue, though. First, symptoms occurring within 1 month of the traumatic event are diagnosed as Acute Stress Disorder (ASD) if and only if the symptoms can't be completely attributed to the normal grieving process or survivor's guilt. (That's not to say that grief and survivor's guilt can't coincide with PTSD, just that PTSD is something different and more severe.) Symptoms that persist longer than 30 days (1 month), or develop after that period, result in a diagnosis of PTSD. ASD can become PTSD, and PTSD can turn up without previous symptoms of ASD, but PTSD does not occur immediately after a traumatic event. Second, PTSD was not recognized as a mental illness until "Shell Shock" was included in the DSM in the 1970s. While you can reference what is known about ASD/PTSD now, you obviously won't call it that in your story.

An interesting fact about PTSD is that, like many other mood disorders, genetics can and does often play a role. Not everyone who experiences a traumatic event develops PTSD. Who does and who doesn't depends on a large number of interconnecting factors, but genetic predisposition to mood disorders is a big player if it's present. It's not at all uncommon for those diagnosed with PTSD to have a family history of mental illness - particularly depression.

Using modern understandings of psychology, traumatic pasts can also be a factor in developing Borderline Personality Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and a variety of other conditions, but these are usually the result of repeated/prolonged traumas (ie. child abuse, caring for a terminally ill parent, etc.).

[kingdmforahorse]

Thanks for the response! I haven't entirely planned out how the event is going to go down, but I know it's going to be very sudden and violent, so there would be multiple very real threats to her friend and herself. I wasn't aware of the specific timeline of ASD and PTSD and how they're labeled, so that's very helpful! Knowledge about how some sort of predisposition could play into an event is what I was after as well, so it's good to know that genetics can play a role. I haven't looked into borderline personality disorder either, so I'll check that out as well.