Psychological 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.

Given that subjective experiences differ between individuals, people will react to similar traumatic events differently.

In other words, not all people who experience a potentially traumatic event will actually become psychologically traumatized.

However, some people will develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after being exposed to a major traumatic event.