ABSTRACT
Trauma is ubiquitous. Switch on the news any day and one is almost guaranteed to hear about an extreme trauma – as I write (June 2010) it is a week after the terrible shootings in Cumbria in which 12 people were killed. The responses to such trauma are very varied and may include PTSD, depression and alcohol abuse or any combination of these disorders or sub-syndromal level of these conditions. Some traumas, such as traffic accidents, may only make the local news but they are common with 189,000 occurring in the UK in 2006 (Department of Transport 2008).
