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Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Medically Ill Patients: What is Known, What Needs to be Determined, and Why is it Important?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Eyal Shemesh  and
Margaret L. Stuber
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Abstract

Can a medical illness or its treatment qualify as an emotionally traumatic event and can it cause posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms? If so, can the view of a medical illness as a traumatic experience enhance our ability to understand patients' adjustment to illness and their emotional reactions to it? Is it important to identify posttraumatic symptoms and try to address them in medically ill patients? These questions form the backbone for this review. Because many questions remain unanswered (or the answers are not definitive yet), we concisely summarize the issues and present our own view of the most pressing questions for further research.

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Type
Review Articles
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CNS Spectrums , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , February 2006 , pp. 106 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2006

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