Complex post-traumatic stress disorder

Complex post-traumatic stress disorder, often shortened to C-PTSD, is a mental health condition that can develop after prolonged or repeated exposure to traumatic events from which a person saw little or no chance of escape, such as sustained abuse, captivity or ongoing domestic violence. The World Health Organization's ICD-11 diagnostic system treats it as a distinct category from standard post-traumatic stress disorder, requiring the usual PTSD symptoms of re-experiencing, avoidance and a sense of current threat, plus three further symptom clusters grouped under what clinicians call disturbances in self-organisation: persistent difficulty regulating emotion, a negative and often shame-filled view of oneself, and lasting trouble forming or sustaining relationships with others. People living with the condition frequently describe prolonged feelings of terror, worthlessness or helplessness, a distorted sense of their own identity, and constant hypervigilance to danger. Because the ICD-11 definition does not require any single identifiable traumatic incident, a wider range of prolonged or repeated experiences can qualify a person for diagnosis than under classic PTSD criteria.