Risk factors of PTSD

Several factors may be useful in identifying people who are most at risk of developing PTSD.  They are:

• the experience of violent assault, especially rape and physical assault
• when the event is personal, rather than something that happens to many other people at the same time – personal violence creates a higher risk than a natural disaster like a tsunami or earthquake
• multiple traumatic experiences, in particular those that happened in childhood
• high levels of emotional reactions (such as fear and anger), dissociation, and numbing in response to trauma
• more interpersonal stress following traumatic event
• gender – women are more likely to develop PTSD than men

It is not clear why more women are diagnosed with PTSD than men are, though women are probably more likely than men to perceive a threat to life during a physical attack.

More men than women actually report experiences of traumatic events such as involvement in combat, motor vehicle accidents and physical assault.  Women are more likely to experience rape and other sexual assault.