Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) affects 30% of United States war veterans. In this paper, we review some of the challenges therapists face when treating PTSD patients and discuss challenges and opportunities for technology to make an impact.

Post-traumatic stress disorder is characterized by exaggerated threat response, and theoretical accounts to date have focused on impaired threat processing and dysregulated prefrontal-cortex-amygdala circuitry. Nevertheless, evidence is accruing for broad, threat-neutral sensory hyperactivity in post-traumatic stress disorder. As low-level, sensory processing impacts higher-order operations, su...

In the past ten years, there has been increasing recognition that children who have been exposed to traumatic events can, like traumaexposed adults, develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Practitioners therefore need to be able to recognise and treat post-traumatic stress reactions in children. However, the direct application of adult diagnostic criteria for PTSD can result in the misdi...