POSTTRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does posttraumatic stress disorder mean? 

• POSTTRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (noun)
  The noun POSTTRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER has 1 sense:

1. an anxiety disorder associated with serious traumatic events and characterized by such symptoms as survivor guilt, reliving the trauma in dreams, numbness and lack of involvement with reality, or recurrent thoughts and images

  Familiarity information: POSTTRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• POSTTRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

An anxiety disorder associated with serious traumatic events and characterized by such symptoms as survivor guilt, reliving the trauma in dreams, numbness and lack of involvement with reality, or recurrent thoughts and images

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

posttraumatic stress disorder; PTSD

Hypernyms ("posttraumatic stress disorder" is a kind of...):

anxiety disorder (a cover term for a variety of mental disorders in which severe anxiety is a salient symptom)

Meronyms (parts of "posttraumatic stress disorder"):

survivor guilt (a deep feeling of guilt often experienced by those who have survived some catastrophe that took the lives of many others; derives in part from a feeling that they did not do enough to save the others who perished and in part from feelings of being unworthy relative to those who died)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "posttraumatic stress disorder"):

battle fatigue; combat fatigue; combat neurosis; shell shock (a mental disorder caused by stress of active warfare)