Dr. Ida Fonkoue

And I know this because I work with the Grady Trauma Project in Atlanta.

It's the largest civilian trauma project.

They've been around for almost 20 years now and have more than 15,000 participants, mostly women.

And it's in downtown, urban Atlanta, Grady.

So this interview takes about an hour and a half and usually it's recorded because it allows the clinician to also go back and review it

and check so it's not just your answers it's also how you answer the question and then just like an interview they can probe further they can probe further into question and into things you say so that's the gold standard for the diagnosis however and the diagnosis is made on and i don't want to go into what i know about the criteria for diagnosis because given that i'm not a clinical psychologist i don't want people to start down i see diagnoses themselves

It's important to know that there are criteria that the clinician will pay attention to.

There are categories of symptoms, right?

You have symptoms that relate to mood, affect on your mood.

You have question that relates to how the re-experiencing of these symptoms.

You have question on your hypervigilance.

You have question on avoidance.

They have a criteria of how many of this symptom you need to have plus how many of that one in each category to be able to meet the threshold.

There's a number because each of those questions and how you answer them have a number.

And the total, there's a threshold where they can say you're borderline, you're mild, you're moderate, you're severe.

So it's at the discretion of the clinical psychologist to make that diagnosis.

Actually, sideline here is one of the reasons why, because the diagnosis of PTSD in the military come with some sort of disability benefit and all of that.

Sometimes there's controversy and sometimes we'll get those diagnoses and we don't because sometimes it's at the discretion of the clinical psychologist.

But the most important thing for the diagnosis is always that

traumatic event.