Midsummer Nights' Science: Who gets PTSD and what helps

Media reports of traumatic events such as sexual assaults, terrorist attacks, and catastrophic disasters have become commonplace. While many people think of post traumatic stress disorder in relation to soldiers returning from war, the majority of people with PTSD are civilians. In this 2018 Midsummer Nights' Science talk, psychiatric epidemiologist Karestan Koenen of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, an associate member of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, discusses how people respond to such experiences, why some people develop PTSD, and what we know about what helps people recover from these common experiences.