Diagnosing PTSD

Preetpal Sandhu, MD Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist, shares advice for parents on how to tell if their child has PTSD following a traumatic event in their life
How To Tell If Your Child Has PTSD After A Traumatic Event
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Diagnosing PTSD

The diagnosis of PTSD or post traumatic stress disorder involves four main components. The first is that your child has to have been exposed to a traumatic event. Let´s say a car accident. The second is that your child has to reexperience the feelings that they had or the thoughts that they had during that traumatic experience. The third is that they have to have a desire to avoid stimuli associated with that trauma. So for example, for a child who is in a car accident, they wouldn´t want to get into a car again. The fourth is what we call autonomic hyper arousal. It´s a fancy word for the feeling that you get when you are on a balcony and somebody comes up behind you and gives you a gentle nudge, and you go huh, like that. That´s something that children who have experienced a traumatic event will start to feel when they experience a traumatic event. So again, a child who has been in a child accident, when they hear a car skid, they get that same feeling. That feeling of being extremely jumpy, extremely aware. That´s called autonomic hyper arousal.



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Preetpal Sandhu, MD

Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist





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