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Post-traumatic stress disorder — master index

Last curated: 2026-09-02 (built by Codex, independently audited by Claude the same day) · 21 curated + 1 draft wiki pages · 385 unique PMID-verified papers (345 from the build, 40 added at audit; all 385 re-fetched and metadata-checked) · 6 landmark notes · 10 guideline records · 15 NCT records live-verified · 9 organizations listed, 7 re-fetched successfully at audit · 17 open questions + 20 unconnected-dot junctions

The condition in five sentences. PTSD is a trauma- and stressor-related disorder defined by a qualifying exposure, a patterned syndrome, persistence and impairment—not by trauma exposure alone. DSM-5 and ICD-11 identify overlapping but non-identical cases, and ICD-11 adds complex PTSD, leaving a live transportability problem for trials built under DSM definitions (Cloitre 2018, PMID 30178492). Trauma-focused CBT variants and EMDR have the strongest comparative evidence, but active-comparator differences, dropout and long-term function are less certain than waitlist-referenced symptom effects (Mavranezouli 2020, PMID 32063234; McLean 2022, PMID 34954460). Medication evidence is narrower — SSRIs improve response versus placebo (RR 0.66, 95% CI 0.59–0.74) but only sertraline and paroxetine are FDA-approved — and prazosin illustrates unresolved heterogeneity, because three positive trials and two meta-analyses favouring it sit alongside a 304-person null re-test (Williams 2022, PMID 35234292; Raskind 2018, PMID 29414272; Yücel 2020, PMID 31855732). MDMA-assisted therapy produced two positive phase 3 trials, but the FDA declined approval in August 2024 and required another phase 3 trial, so efficacy, safety, blinding and regulation remain separate questions (Mitchell 2021, PMID 33972795; Mitchell 2023, PMID 37709999; Morland 2026, PMID 41820235).

Start here: overview. Research frontier: OPEN-QUESTIONS.md. Growth history: LOG.md.

Scope and pooling rule

  • PTSD owns the disorder, not trauma exposure in general.
  • PTSD and generalized anxiety disorder are neighbours, not subsets. Mixed-anxiety estimates are labelled and only PTSD strata are used as PTSD effects.
  • Comorbid depression is cross-linked rather than absorbed.
  • Complex PTSD is in scope as an ICD-11 sibling diagnosis and unresolved treatment-transport problem.

Reading paths

Wiki pages

Section Page Scope Status
Overview overview.md Post-traumatic stress disorder — Overview curated
Diagnosis diagnosis-and-classification.md PTSD — Diagnosis and classification curated
Complex-Ptsd complex-ptsd.md Complex PTSD curated
Epidemiology epidemiology-and-risk.md PTSD — Epidemiology and risk curated
Neurobiology neurobiology-and-mechanism.md PTSD — Neurobiology and mechanism curated
Prolonged-Exposure prolonged-exposure.md Prolonged exposure for PTSD curated
Cognitive-Processing-Therapy cognitive-processing-therapy.md Cognitive processing therapy for PTSD curated
Emdr emdr.md Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing curated
Psychotherapy comparative-psychotherapy-evidence.md PTSD — Comparative psychotherapy evidence curated
Dropout dropout-and-nonresponse.md PTSD treatment dropout and nonresponse curated
Pharmacotherapy pharmacotherapy.md PTSD pharmacotherapy curated
Sleep sleep-and-nightmare-treatment.md PTSD sleep and nightmare treatment curated
Mdma mdma-and-psychedelic-assisted-therapy.md MDMA and psychedelic-assisted therapy for PTSD curated
Prevention early-intervention-and-prevention.md PTSD early intervention and prevention curated
Military military-and-veteran-populations.md PTSD in military and veteran populations curated
Children children-and-adolescents.md PTSD in children and adolescents curated
Comorbidity comorbidity.md PTSD comorbidity curated
Moral-Injury moral-injury.md Moral injury and PTSD curated
Guidelines guidelines.md PTSD clinical practice guidelines draft — see audit note
Safety red-flags-and-safety-concerns.md PTSD red flags and safety concerns curated
Patient-Experience patient-experience-and-advocacy.md PTSD patient experience and advocacy curated
Clinical-Trials clinical-trials-landscape.md PTSD clinical trials landscape curated

Literature layer

Artifact Contents Status
BIBLIOGRAPHY.md 345 unique live-retrieved PubMed records; tags and cited-by index curated
notes/ 6 landmark deep notes curated
guidelines/REGISTRY.md Current and superseded international guidance; disagreements and watch list curated
statistics/STATISTICS.md Definition-preserving quantitative reference tables curated
patient-voice/ Ethics/method, 9 organizations, 10 themes, annotated sources curated

Curation state

The 22 pages were written by Codex from live PubMed E-utilities and ClinicalTrials.gov v2 queries on 2026-09-02, then independently audited by Claude on the same date. No model audited its own writing.

The audit re-fetched all 385 PMIDs and 15 NCT IDs live, checked 659 reference lines, 655 evidence-ledger rows and every claim-to-citation pair on every page, re-ran the searches behind each asserted absence, and fixed what was wrong rather than only reporting it. 21 pages passed and are now status: curated.

guidelines.md remains draft for one specific reason: three of its load-bearing facts rest on issuing-body web pages rather than PubMed records, and those could not be independently re-fetched from the audit session — healthquality.va.gov failed at the TLS layer, and istss.org returned its content client-side so the 361-RCT/208-meta-analysis/125-recommendation counts could not be read from the raw HTML. The VA/DoD guideline has since been re-anchored to its peer-reviewed synopsis (Schnurr 2024, PMID 38408360), which independently confirms the 34-recommendation figure. Separately, NICE's NG116 evidence page lists a July 2026 exceptional surveillance whose decision document returned HTTP 403; until its outcome is known, describing NG116 as unchanged since April 2025 would be an assumption rather than a finding. That is the first item for the next sweep.