Yes, and not only can those things also cause or alter the course of physical illnesses, but physical and mental illnesses can cause or contribute to each other (for instance, terrifying experiences with physical illness can cause emotional reactions that lead eventually to PTSD).
There's also the somewhat pointless attempt to draw some hard-and-fast line between "ordinary" emotional reactions and pathological ones. I think the dividing lines between Acute Stress Response, acute PTSD and chronic PTSD exemplify this. Imagine if physical illnesses and injuries were treated that way. Oh, you didn't actually rip that nail back to the quick unless it also gets infected. (I suppose some chronic illnesses do get treated this way. Subclinical hypothyroidism comes to mind as an example. I can't think of any injuries that are understood as not being real unless they're unusually bad, and injuries are more of a fair comparison with PTSD than illnesses.) It's pointless; how is someone who experiences symptoms for two months and twenty-nine days not mentally ill, but someone who experiences them for three months is?
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branchandroot
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Date: 2013-03-23 12:16 am (UTC)There's also the somewhat pointless attempt to draw some hard-and-fast line between "ordinary" emotional reactions and pathological ones. I think the dividing lines between Acute Stress Response, acute PTSD and chronic PTSD exemplify this. Imagine if physical illnesses and injuries were treated that way. Oh, you didn't actually rip that nail back to the quick unless it also gets infected. (I suppose some chronic illnesses do get treated this way. Subclinical hypothyroidism comes to mind as an example. I can't think of any injuries that are understood as not being real unless they're unusually bad, and injuries are more of a fair comparison with PTSD than illnesses.) It's pointless; how is someone who experiences symptoms for two months and twenty-nine days not mentally ill, but someone who experiences them for three months is?