Defining Social Illness in a Diagnostic World: Trauma and the Cultural Logic of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

The article presents a study which examines the manners that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) carriers make public claims about PTSD. It analyzes the narrative data of several social issues including genocide, child sexual abuse, war, and slavery wherein PTSD has been determined as a powerful cultural script to interpret mental health symptoms and a narrative of social illness. Also explained is the sociocognitive implications of PTSD diagnosis and its relevance to social memory studies.