Many survivors of sexual abuse experience similar symptoms, including emotional, physical, sexual and social effects. PTSD, a condition recognized in war veterans and catastrophic event survivors, is the diagnosis mental health providers use to characterize some of these symptoms. Not all survivors have any or all of these symptoms. In fact, some survivors' experiences do not fit these diagnostic criteria at all. Others expand beyond it to include disturbance of mood and interpersonal relations. But for many, recognizing these symptoms as a diagnosis common to others who have had the same experience of sexual abuse is liberating. Many individuals report relief that they are not "going crazy," but in fact experiencing a very real and organized response to a trauma. Counseling can sometimes alleviate symptoms, and eventually help survivors to live symptom free.

The diagnostic criteria for PTSD in the DSM-IV-TR (APA, 2000, pp. 467-8) include:

• The person has been exposed to a traumatic event in which both of the following were present:
  1. the person experienced, witnessed, or was confronted with an event or events that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others;
  2. the person's response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror.

• The traumatic event is persistently re-experienced in one or more of the following ways:
  1. recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of the event, including images, thoughts, or perceptions;
  2. recurrent or distressing dreams of the event;
  3. acting or feeling as if the event were recurring (includes a sense of reliving the experience, illusions, hallucinations, and dissociative flashback episodes , including those that occur on awakening or when intoxicated);
  4. intense psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues symbolize or resemble as aspect of the event;
  5. physiological reactivity to exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event.

• Persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma and numbing of general responsiveness (not present before the trauma), as indicated by three (or more) of the following:
  1. efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings, or conversations associated with the trauma;
  2. efforts to avoid activities, places, or people that arouse recollections of the trauma
  3. inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma;
  4. marked diminished interest or participation in significant activities
  5. restricted range of affect (e.g. unable to have loving feelings) and
  6. sense of foreshortened future (e.g. does not expect to have a career, marriage, children, or a normal life span).

• Persistent symptoms of increased arousal (not present before the trauma), as indicated by two (or more) of the following:
  1. difficulty falling or staying asleep;
  2. irritability or outbursts of anger;
  3. difficulty concentrating;
  4. hypervigilence;
  5. exaggerated startled response.

• Duration of the disturbance is more than one month.
• Disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.
• Can be acute, chronic, or with delayed onset.