ABSTRACT
References to what is now called posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can be found in a wide range of historical texts spanning centuries, including the Bible, Homer, Herodotus, and Shakespeare. e symptoms that are recognized today as belonging to the well-dened psychiatric disorder that can result from exposure to trauma have also gone by other names, including “railway spine,” “traumatic hysteria,” “shell shock,” and “combat fatigue” (Smith 2011). However, for much of its history PTSD has been referred to as a disorder of adults, with the initial Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 3rd edition (DSMIII) criteria for PTSD being based primarily on studies of war veterans and adult rape victims (American Psychiatric Association 1980; March 1993). Despite this, there has long been recognition within the elds of psychology and psychiatry that children and adolescents develop posttraumatic symptoms as well, and may manifest these symptoms dierently than adults depending on their age and developmental stage. Serious examination of the eects of trauma in children was rst mentioned in literature during World War II (Dunsdon 1941; Brander 1943; Freud and Burlingham 1943), but it was not until 1987 that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 3rd edition, revised (DSMIII-R) incorporated developmental speciers for children and adolescents in the PTSD criteria (American Psychiatric Association 1987). ough the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM-IV) further expanded the developmental speciers for PTSD (American Psychiatric Association 1994), the PTSD criteria in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-5) is the most developmentally informed to date, with a greater emphasis on the behavioral sequelae of trauma for children age 7 and above, and the creation of the rst developmental subtype of a DSM disorder: posttraumatic stress disorder for Children 6 Years and Younger (American Psychiatric Association 2013a).
