This illness is usually diagnosed following a traumatic event in one’s life; even a trauma that happened many years ago can affect one’s mental health years later. People diagnosed with PTSD have had some very frightening or life-threatening occurrence in their life and something in their current situation triggers similar feelings to what occurred in the past trauma. Basically, with post traumatic stress disorder we are taken back to an event in the past as if it were happening now. Some examples of traumas that can induce PTSD are: witnessing or being a victim of assault or other violent crime; being involved in a natural disaster like a hurricane or earthquake; engaging in war activities; being involved in a major accident; childhood sexual abuse, rape, and/or physical attack in any form.  We often associate veterans coming home from war with PTSD and sometimes we forget the less obvious sources of trauma like family violence. Not everyone who experiences trauma winds up with a mental health diagnosis of PTSD; we all experience trauma in different ways.