What is ptsd called now


PTS vs. PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder): Dropping the “D”

Learn why dropping the “D” from PTSD is significant and how it can benefit those affected by post-traumatic stress.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms have been documented as far back as the Civil War. Though the name has experienced a few changes, from soldier’s heart, shell shock, battle fatigue, PTSD and now more recently post-traumatic stress, the definition for the condition remains relatively the same.

If the terms of the condition haven’t truly changed, why has the name changed? Including “D” for disorder in the name carries a stigma that often leaves those most vulnerable, such as veterans, unwilling to seek help. Based on this knowledge, notable figures have been pushing to change the name of the condition from PTSD to PTS to encourage more people to seek help.

Changing the Name to Post-Traumatic Stress (PTS)

PTSD was first named in the 1980s and classified as an anxiety disorder by the American Psychiatric Association. The most recent revision of the DSM-5 removes PTSD from the anxiety disorders category and places it in a new diagnostic category called “Trauma and Stressor-Related Disorders,” since the symptoms of PTSD also include guilt, shame and anger. The most significant diagnostic criteria require exposure to a traumatic or stressful event.

While PTSD remains the official diagnostic term for this condition, notable figures in mental health and champions for veterans mental health have consistently referred to PTSD as PTS in the news and across social media platforms. As the George W. Bush website states, “PTS is an injury, it’s not a disorder.” The goal behind the PTSD name change is to encourage veterans to feel more comfortable opening up about their experiences and seek help sooner.

A New Dialogue

It’s reported that less than half of veterans with any diagnosed disorder receive treatment. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs published a report in 2018 that revealed that 20 veterans die by suicide each day. This growing public health concern certainly has the attention of many with the end goal of helping affected individuals seek treatment. PTSD treatment has seen positive effects, with up to 60% of individuals experiencing response rates to certain treatment methods.

One key issue in changing the name to PTS involves health care coverage. Veterans are not able to receive benefits or health care coverage with the diagnosis of PTS. However, since PTSD is included in the DSM-5, this diagnosis qualifies veterans for benefits and even disability payments. It’s clear that the name and diagnosis of PTS don’t carry the same weight as PTSD in the medical and insurance world, but some view it as a start for change in opening the conversation for more to seek help.

Related: The Basics of Veteran Culture and Its Impact on Clinical Work (Webinar)

Breaking the Stigma

Officials in the Pentagon have dropped the “D” from PTSD for several years now. This change has helped break down the barriers associated with PTSD treatment for veterans. Many service members report feelings of shame associated with seeking help for their symptoms. Breaking the stigma of PTSD is crucial to ensuring that more people receive treatment and why some individuals consistently drop the “D” for disorder from the name. When the focus is shifted away from classifying the condition as a mental health disorder instead of a normal response to trauma, it can open the door to treatment for many who are suffering.

If you or someone you know is suffering from post-traumatic stress and are using substances to help relieve the pain, know that help is available. Reach out to The Recovery Village and one of our representatives can discuss an appropriate treatment plan. Don’t suffer in silence — help is a phone call away.

Editor – Megan Hull

Megan Hull is a content specialist who edits, writes and ideates content to help people find recovery. Read more

Medically Reviewed By – Dr. Karen Vieira, PhD

Dr. Karen Vieira has a PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Florida College of Medicine Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Read more


Pai A, Suris AM, North CS. “Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in the DSM[…]ptual Considerations.” Behavioral Sciences, March 2017. Accessed May 16, 2019.

Kelly, Kacie. “Changing the Dialogue of PTS.” George W. Bush Presidential Center, June 29, 2018. Accessed May 16, 2019.

Vazan, Peter. “Substance Use and Other Mental Health Di[…]Unmet Treatment Need.” Subst Use Misuse, July 2013. Accessed May 22, 2019.

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. “VA Releases National Suicide Data Report.” June 18, 2018. Accessed May 16, 2019.

Reisman, Miriam. “PTSD Treatment for Veterans: What’s Wo[…]w, and What’s Next.” Pharmacy and Therapeutics, October 2016. Accessed May 16, 2019.

Thompson, Mark. “The Disappearing “Disorder”: Why PTSD is becoming PTS.” TIME, June 5, 2011. Accessed May 16, 2019.

Medical Disclaimer

The Recovery Village aims to improve the quality of life for people struggling with substance use or mental health disorder with fact-based content about the nature of behavioral health conditions, treatment options and their related outcomes. We publish material that is researched, cited, edited and reviewed by licensed medical professionals. The information we provide is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It should not be used in place of the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare providers.

What Are the Differences Between PTS and PTSD?

It’s easy to confuse post-traumatic stress (PTS) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In addition to sharing similar names, there’s considerable overlap in symptoms between the two conditions. Both PTS and PTSD are associated with feeling fearful and/or nervous, avoiding the activity or place associated with the traumatic event, and nightmares. However, there are significant differences in symptom intensity, duration, and treatment.

Post-traumatic Stress

PTS is a common, normal, and often adaptive response to experiencing a traumatic or stressful event. Common occurrences, like car accidents, can trigger PTS as well as more unusual events like military combat or kidnapping. Almost everyone who experiences a scary situation will show at least a few signs of post-traumatic stress. That’s because our brains are hard-wired to tell our bodies to tense our muscles, breathe faster, and pump more blood when we’re under intense stress. This is the “fight-or-flight” response that prepares your body to deal with a threat or challenge in the environment by pumping more blood and oxygen to your muscles, and it shuts down non-critical functions like digestion. This fight-or-flight response is a normal reflex during and sometimes even after a traumatic event, which is why PTS is considered a normal reaction and not a mental illness.

PTS Symptoms and Behaviors

If you’re experiencing post-traumatic stress, your heart may race, hands shake, you may sweat or feel afraid and nervous. After the stressful event, you might avoid or be leery of engaging in that activity again, you may have a bad dream about the event you just experienced, or you may feel nervous in a situation that reminds you of the unpleasant event. Although they can be momentarily intense, symptoms of PTS usually subside a few days after the event and won’t cause any prolonged meaningful interference with your life. One positive outcome of experiencing PTS may be that you behave more carefully in a potentially dangerous situation in the future.

PTS Treatment

Since post-traumatic stress is not a mental disorder, treatment is not required as the symptoms will likely improve or subside on their own within a month. However, you should talk to a healthcare provider if you feel troubled by your symptoms — if they’re interfering with your work, school, or relationships or if you’re engaging in reckless behavior such as drinking or using drugs to cope with symptoms.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

PTSD is a clinically-diagnosed condition listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the recognized authority on mental illness diagnoses. The fifth revision, released May 2013, includes the latest diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder.

Anyone who has experienced or witnessed a situation that involves the possibility of death or serious injury, or who learns that a close family member or friend has experienced a traumatic event, can develop post-traumatic stress disorder, although most people don’t. It’s still not completely understood why some people who are exposed to traumatic situations develop PTSD while others don’t.

PTSD Symptoms and Behaviors

Common symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder include reliving a traumatic event through nightmares, flashbacks, or constantly thinking about it. You might avoid situations or people that remind you of the event, have only negative thoughts or emotions, and constantly feel jittery, nervous, or “on edge.” Although some of these symptoms sound similar to PTS, the difference is the duration and intensity. Symptoms that continue for more than one month, are severe, and interfere with your daily functioning are characteristic of PTSD.

Behaviors that indicate professional intervention is needed may include drinking or smoking more than usual as attempts to reduce anxiety or anger, and aggressive driving. Service members who have experienced combat can be especially nervous driving under overpasses and past litter on the roadside — behavior learned in Iraq and Afghanistan where insurgents hide improvised explosive devices in garbage and use overpasses to shoot at vehicles. Other behaviors that indicate that help may be needed can include being wary of crowds, showing reluctance to go to movie theaters, crowded stores, or nightclubs, and avoiding news that addresses overseas combat or getting angry at the reports.

PTSD Treatments

Certain medications and therapies are widely accepted by healthcare providers as effective treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder. Sertraline and Paroxetine are two medications the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved for treatment. Trauma-focused psychotherapy techniques such as prolonged exposure therapy and cognitive processing therapy have also been proven to be effective and widely used.

Overall Key Points

  • PTS symptoms are common after deployment and may improve or resolve within a month. PTSD symptoms are more severe, persistent, can interfere with daily functioning, and can last for more than a month.
  • Most people with PTS do not develop PTSD. You can develop PTSD without first having PTS.
  • PTS requires no medical intervention, unless symptoms are severe. However, you may benefit from psychological healthcare support to prevent symptoms from worsening.
  • PTSD is a medically-diagnosed condition and should be treated by a clinician.

To learn more about PTSD:

  • The Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury has fact sheets, treatment information, and resources on psychological healthcare.
  • The National Center for Telehealth and Technology develops smartphone apps, which include apps to help you track your mood and assist with PTSD treatment. The center also offers visitors an opportunity to learn how combat-related PSTD may be acquired, what it can be like to live with PTSD, and how to access care from its virtual PTSD learning experience.
  • The National Center for PTSD under the Department of Veterans Affairs has information for veterans, service members, families, and providers.

Posted on BrainLine December 9, 2013. Reviewed July 25, 2018.

Written exclusively for BrainLine Military by Dr. James Bender, Deployment Health Clinical Center.

Dr. James Bender is a former Army psychologist who deployed to Iraq as the brigade psychologist for the 1st Cavalry Division 4th Brigade Combat Team out of Fort Hood, Texas. In his current position, Dr. Bender is a subject matter expert for the PTSD Clinical Pathways Program, which is developing a pathway to treat PTSD that will be implemented across the Department of Defense.

how to use it and what's wrong with it :: Autonews

In the five months since paper vehicles were abandoned in Russia, 2.2 million electronic vehicle passports have already been issued. The creators of the system talk about the convenience of an electronic document, the impossibility of losing it and faster registration of a car when registering. In addition, EPTS is a transaction transparency tool for the subsequent resale of the car.

However, during the first months of the system's operation, difficulties were also discovered - for example, car owners are often not indicated in an electronic document. We talked about this with Boris Ionov, Managing Director of AS Electronic Passport System, and at the same time found out what else is important for the owner of a car with EPTS to know who can issue documents and what is wrong with this system in general.

adv.rbc.ru

By analogy with a paper PTS, the electronic counterpart contains all the information about the car: its weight, engine power, the most important technical characteristics, VIN number, and mileage data. However, unlike a paper document, it is also possible to enter information about passing a technical inspection, information about the restrictions imposed on the car, as well as data about changes in the design in the EPTS.

The system implies that in the EPTS it will be possible to see data on whether the car is pledged to banks, as well as information from bailiffs and data from the traffic police on whether changes have been made to the design. However, all this information is not yet available in the EPTS.

“The bailiffs have not yet shown any interest in the operation of the system. They still have not determined what benefits work with EPTS can bring. Therefore, I can say that cooperation with bailiffs is now at an embryonic level. As for the data on changes in the design, here, too, not everything is working out yet. There are technical difficulties in finalizing the internal traffic police system. Now this information is actually added manually,” explained Boris Ionov, Managing Director of Electronic Passport System AS.

During system operation, a serious defect was detected. Or rather, the incorrect interpretation of the government decree by some participants in the process of working with EPTS. This has already led to a large number of complaints and questions from car owners.

The fact is that, according to the government decree on EPTS, information about the owner is entered into the document voluntarily, that is, only with consent to the processing of personal data.

“But some manufacturers and dealers interpret this differently. They equate the word "voluntarily" with the word "optional", that is, they do not want to enter information about the owner. And many buyers found themselves in a difficult situation, because they do not see themselves in the electronic passport. Although, of course, there is nothing difficult in getting all the information about the data from the EPTS through your personal account, ”Ionov specified.

According to him, the reasons for this behavior of dealers is that they do not want to do extra work, spend extra time on registration and authorization of owners. In addition, the direction that was chosen for entering the owners is authorization through the State Services portal. And sometimes the dealer cannot enter the owner because he does not have an account on the State Services.

Photo: Global Look Press

“But more often than not, the dealer simply doesn't say anything to the owner, and the data about him doesn't get into the EPTS. There are cases when dealers refuse owners a request to enter information. If the dealer did not do this, then this can be done at the MFC. But even there they are not yet active in working with the EPTS system. In this regard, we have already sent a letter to the Ministry of Industry and Trade to provide authorized organizations with the opportunity to also enter information about the owner if the dealer has not done so. Now these issues are being worked out, they require the intervention of government agencies,” explained the Managing Director of the Electronic Passport System AS.

If the car is new, then the electronic passport for it is created by the manufacturer of the car, which is indicated as the owner. After that, the dealer buys the car - information about this also appears in the EPTS. Further, as conceived by the developers, the name of the end buyer should appear in the system, it can be entered by the dealer or the MFC, but both do not always do this. In the near future, perhaps, a number of authorized organizations will appear.

If new cars made abroad are imported into Russia, then official importers, that is, Russian representative offices of car brands, deal with the registration. And, finally, if the car was purchased privately in another country, then a testing laboratory can issue an electronic PTS. Such a purchase scheme is popular in the Far East with right-hand drive cars. In the very first month of abandoning paper forms, there was a collapse: the traffic police stopped accepting paper documents, and hundreds of motorists were forced to urgently look for laboratories.

“Most of the largest car manufacturers and many importers switched to EPTS immediately and without any problems. The only ones that got delayed were privately imported cars. Therefore, there were some difficulties with this transition in Vladivostok. But today everything has already been settled and is being formalized in the normal mode in the laboratories,” explained Boris Ionov.

In addition, according to him, the countries of the Customs Union are not yet very active in order to fully work with the system. “Colleagues from Belarus are actively involved, the rest are working in this direction, but not everything is going smoothly yet,” Ionov complained.

Photo: Rolf

Today, the scheme for importing a car into Russia is as follows: a citizen imports a car and immediately goes to a testing laboratory, where a conformity assessment is carried out. They also issue a certificate of conformity of the design to all safety requirements. After that, the laboratory draws up the EPTS. Then the documents are submitted to the customs and the electronic declaration procedure takes place, and the service can be obtained remotely. Customs officers calculate payments and recycling fees, fix the payment. Then the EPTS receives the status of the current one, after which you can go to the traffic police and register the car.

As Boris Ionov, Managing Director of the Electronic Passport System AS, explained, another difficulty is related to inconsistencies between the EPTS and the internal traffic police database. According to him, it is high time to update the latter, and employees need to be trained to work with electronic passports, since there are often situations when the inspector cannot understand the system or doubts due to some failures and simply refuses to register, although with EPTS everything in order.

“An experienced employee will figure it out, while an inexperienced one will simply refuse. It happens that one information is indicated in the EPTS statement, and another is pulled into the traffic police database. The internal database needs to be updated for a long time and we were promised that everything will be ready in May. Now it happens that even if everything is correct, but the traffic police have doubts, it is easier for them to refuse than to understand. Therefore, the conclusion is this: it is necessary to send inspectors for clarifications, to train, ”Boris Ionov explained.

Despite all the shortcomings in the operation of the system, owners who purchased cars after November 1 have already noted the convenience of EPTS. Unlike a paper passport, an electronic one cannot be lost, and there is no need to make duplicates, which always raises doubts when reselling. Also, detailed information can be entered into an electronic document without fear that it will run out of space. Traffic police officers have already begun to process data faster during registration. And when selling a car, information about the new owner is entered instantly, which automatically saves the seller from fines for the sold car.

Photo: Shutterstock

Russia has introduced electronic PTS: how it works and who needs to change documents on a car

Photo: Klops Archive

Russia has stopped issuing paper vehicle passports - the country has introduced electronic registration of vehicles. "Klops" figured out how to issue a TCP and whether it is worth changing the document for those who received a paper version.

What has changed?

Paper TCP is still in force

No one is going to outlaw paper TCP. Those who have not previously issued an electronic version will continue to use a regular document, Klops was told in the traffic police.

The replacement of such passports can be carried out exclusively voluntarily, on the basis of the will of the owner of the vehicle, ”the State traffic inspectorate explained.

What is EPTS and why is it needed

Officially, the document is called an electronic vehicle passport (EPTS). This is an entry in the database that has its own unique 15-digit number. It reflects information about the car, about its current and former owners, about passing technical inspection and about the number of insured events. The document will also indicate all kinds of restrictions. In the future, the list of data is planned to be expanded.

Full information about the vehicle will make all transactions with the car as transparent as possible. The car owner, in addition, will not lose such a PTS, and scammers will not be able to fake or steal it.

Another important point: any number of owners can be entered into the electronic passport, while the paper counterpart has to be changed if the columns run out.

Who will get access to the database

Traffic police, insurance companies, official dealers and banks will get access to the electronic PTS. Each of the structures will be able to make changes only to its section.

How electronic registration works

When buying a new car, the dealer will immediately issue an electronic passport. The traffic police officer uses the data for registration. When you import a car from abroad, you can issue a document in authorized organizations.

How to register a vehicle with an electronic PTS

The vehicle registration procedure has not changed. When contacting the insurance and traffic police, it is enough to indicate only the number of the electronic passport.

Is it necessary to print the EPTS on paper

The motorist can receive an extract that is valid on the day of the application. It contains information from the electronic record. Paper can be shown when selling, but it is not considered a document.

Can a car be stolen if data is leaked?

The procedure cannot be carried out without this action. If you want to register vehicles indiscriminately, attackers will have difficulties," says Gubenko.

If the car is imported from Kazakhstan, Belarus or Kyrgyzstan0002 The electronic title rule applies to cars from the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union. In neighboring states, until 2022, it is allowed to draw up a document both in electronic and paper form. Electronic passports must be issued for cars imported into Russia.


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