Witnessed events include, but are not limited  to, observing threatened or serious in-
jury, unnatural death, physical or sexual violence inflicted on another individual as a re-
sult of violent assault, severe domestic violen ce, severe accident, war, and disaster; it may
also include witnessing a medical catastrophe (e.g., a life-threatening hemorrhage) involv-
ing one’s child. Events experienced indirectly  through learning about the event are limited
to close relatives or close friends. Such even ts must have been violent or accidental—death
due to natural causes does not qualify—and in clude violent personal assault, suicide, se-
rious accident, or serious injury. The disorder may be especially severe when the stressor
is interpersonal and intentional (e .g., torture, rape). The like lihood of developing this dis-
order may increase as the intensity of and physical proximity to the stressor increase.
The traumatic event can be reexperienced in various wa ys. Commonly, the individual
has recurrent and intrusive recollections of the event (Criterion B1). The recollections are
spontaneous or triggered recurrent memories of the event that usua lly occur in response
to a stimulus that is reminiscent of the traumatic experience (e.g., the sound of a backfiring
car triggering memories of gunshots). Thes e intrusive memories often include sensory
(e.g., sensing the intense heat that was percei ved in a house fire), emotional (e.g., experi-
encing the fear of believing that one was about  to be stabbed), or physiological (e.g., expe-
riencing the shortness of breath that one su ffered during a near-drowning) components.
Distressing dreams may contain themes that are representative of or thematically re-
lated to the major threats involved in the trau matic event. (For example, in the case of a