Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an unexpected response to a significant trauma. While the effects of PTSD can be disabling for those with the disorder, suicide is still an uncommon result of PTSD.
There are several risk factors for suicide. PTSD has a major correlation to suicide if the sufferer also possessed the following criteria:
- The person has experienced chronic symptoms (persistent symptoms for more than one year)
- The person also experienced childhood trauma or abuse
- The person has experienced a gender-specific depression component (This is typically disabling depression with women, and uncontrollable episodes of rage with men)
- The person is self medicating (in studies, those who self-medicated specifically with cannabis & alcohol were most correlated with suicide)
