Trauma

Psychological trauma is damage to a person's mind as a result of one or more events that cause overwhelming amounts of stress that exceed the person's ability to cope or integrate the emotions involved, eventually leading to serious, long-term negative consequences.Trauma is not the same as mental distress or suffering, both of which are universal human experiences.

Given that subjective experiences differ between individuals, people will react to similar events differently. In other words, not all people who experience a potentially traumatic event will actually become psychologically traumatized (although they may all be distressed and experience suffering).However, some people will develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after being exposed to a major traumatic event. This discrepancy in risk rate can be attributed to protective factors some individuals may have that enable them to cope with difficult events; they are related to temperamental and environmental factors from among others. Some examples are resilience characteristics and active seeking of help.

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