%0 Journal Article
%T Pathologizing the wounded? Post-traumatic stress disorder in an era of gun violence
%J Rhetoric of health and medicine
%D 2020
%A Johnston, Emily R.
%V 3
%N 1
%P 1-33
%X 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. "PTSD" 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 "mental disorder" 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>
%G en
%I University of Florida Press
%@ 2573-5055
%U http://dx.doi.org/10.5744/rhm.2020.1001