ABSTRACT
Trauma-and stressor-related disorders are a new grouping of disorders introduced in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013), whose etiology pairs the onset of the mental disorder with the presence of an external event. These events range from extreme high-magnitude stressors such as torture, terror attacks, rape, childhood sexual abuse, natural disasters, or war, to more commonly experienced stressors such as the loss of a romantic relationship, persistent physical illness, or business difficulties. Ascribing the etiology of a mental disorder to an external event as a causal mechanism is difficult at best. A large number of mental disorders (e.g., major depression, panic disorder, schizophrenia, social phobia, specific phobia, generalized anxiety disorder, substance use disorders) are likely to begin, or are exacerbated, after a stressor (e.g., de Graaf, Bijl, Ravelli, Smit, & Vollenbergh, 2002; Klauke, Deckert, Reif, Pauli, & Domschke, 2010). Yet, the presence or the nature of the stressor often leaves a large portion of the variance of who develops a mental disorder unexplained (e.g., Kendler & Gardner, 2010). This is even the case with disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD; Brewin, Andrews, & Valentine, 2000; Ozer, Best, Lipsey, & Weiss, 2003; Trickey, Siddaway, Meiser-Stedman, Serpell, & Field, 2012), which argues for the need for multifactorial gene and environment etiologic models.
