@article{ref1,
title="Pathologizing the wounded? Post-traumatic stress disorder in an era of gun violence",
journal="Rhetoric of health and medicine",
year="2020",
author="Johnston, Emily R.",
volume="3",
number="1",
pages="1-33",
abstract="Drawing on the 2017 Las Vegas Shooting as a potent example of trauma, this article investigates how classifying post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) (APA, 2013) shapes cultural understandings of traumatization and survival in an era of gun violence. &quot;PTSD&quot; reproduces colonizing arrangements of power, as elucidated by an activity theory analysis of the DSM-5, the global authority on psychiatric diagnoses, alongside both diagnostic protocols for PTSD and PTSD discourse in news coverage of the Las Vegas Shooting. This rhetorical approach to the DSM-5 as a complex system of activity exposes conflicting effects: classifying post-traumatic stress as &quot;mental disorder&quot; qualifies traumatized survivors for medical treatment, while also pathologizing the debilitating, long-term trauma that mass shootings can cause. This potential conflict between alleviating and pathologizing suffering shores up an individual or biomedical model of health, in contrast to a public health model oriented around the health of populations, that may shame survivors and commodify their pain.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="2573-5055",
doi="10.5744/rhm.2020.1001",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.5744/rhm.2020.1001"
}