Post Traumatic Stress Disorder occurs when a person is exposed to or experiences a stressful, traumatic event. The person's response to the event must involve intense fear, helplessness, or horror. The nightmares and flashbacks, difficulty sleeping and feelings of being detached or estranged could then begin to occur over the next few days or weeks of the event. Symptoms usually appear within the first three months after the trauma. A person may not experience all of the mentioned effects but could experience one or more as described.
Chronic symptoms can have periods of increase followed by periods of decrease and even remission.
Duration of the symptoms also varies, with complete recovery occurring for many within three months in most cases. There were many others having persisting symptoms for longer than 12 months after the trauma. People who have experienced childhood sexual or physical abuse, domestic assault, torture, being a hostage, or imprisoned during war or in a concentration camp can experience guilt feelings of ineffectiveness, shame, despair or hopelessness. They may think there was something that they could have done differently to keep the trauma from happening. They can feel permanently damaged and experience a loss of their belief system prior to the trauma.