CIPSRT | Trauma / Traumatic injury

Glossary of Terms

Trauma and traumatic injury are currently not listed as diagnoses in the DSM-5-TR or ICD-11.
A trauma is something that causes physical, emotional, spiritual, or psychological harm.
In the mental health context, trauma is a person’s experience during an event that is so distressing to them that it overwhelms them emotionally; psychological trauma can be the cause of mental disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder.
Psychologically stressful experiences, however, are not necessarily traumatic.

Trauma and traumatic injury are currently not listed as diagnoses in the DSM-5-TR or ICD-11.
Trauma can be:
- physical, meaning an injury to living tissue caused by an extrinsic physical, biological, or radiological agent, or
- psychological, meaning a disordered psychic or behavioural state resulting from severe mental or emotional stress.
In the mental health context, trauma is a person’s experience during an event so distressing that it overwhelms them emotionally. Severe psychological trauma is considered the etiology (or cause) of posttraumatic stress disorder.
A person can experience physical trauma, for example, a minor laceration, sprain, skin infection, or sunburn, without also experiencing psychological trauma. On the other hand, severe physical trauma that causes unstable multiorgan system polytrauma is often associated with psychological trauma.
Psychologically stressful experiences are not necessarily traumatic. People can feel stressed without experiencing trauma.
The word “injury” typically means an acute state, but is often used colloquially to describe a chronic state arising from an acute experience or condition, or a physical or psychological trauma (e.g. an operational stress injury [OSI]).