Post-traumatic stress disorder
Terminology

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders does not hyphenate "post" and "traumatic", thus, the DSM-5 lists the disorder as posttraumatic stress disorder. However, many scientific journal articles and other scholarly publications do hyphenate the name of the disorder, viz., "post-traumatic stress disorder". Dictionaries also differ with regard to the preferred spelling of the disorder with the Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged using the hyphenated spelling, and the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition and the Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary giving the non-hyphenated spelling.

Some authors have used the terms " post-traumatic stress syndrome " or " post-traumatic stress symptoms " (" PTSS "), or simply " post-traumatic stress " (" PTS ") in the case of the U.S. Department of Defense, to avoid stigma associated with the word "disorder".

The comedian George Carlin criticized the euphemism treadmill which led to progressive change of the way PTSD was referred to over the course of the 20th century, from " shell shock " in the First World War to the "battle fatigue" in the Second World War, to "operational exhaustion" in the Korean War, to the current "post-traumatic stress disorder", coined during the Vietnam War, which "added a hyphen" and which, he commented, "completely burie under jargon ". He also stated that the name given to the condition has had a direct effect on the way veteran soldiers with PTSD were treated and perceived by civilian populations over time.
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