Acute stress disorder is caused by exposure to traumatic events, resulting in extreme fear, helplessness, or horror. It involves re-experiencing the events through intrusive images, memories, nightmares, or flashbacks. It leads to the development of avoidance behavior for remainders of the event (i.e., people, places, things, etc.) and heightened arousal (tension, irritability/anger, sleep problems, lack of concentration, and abnormal startle response). Acute Stress Disorder leads to impairment in functioning. People with acute stress disorder may also feel detached from others and have fewer positive emotional responses than before the event. A person may believe others will not want to socialize with them because of the trauma.
Symptoms must last between 3 days and 1 month to be diagnosed with acute stress disorder. People with acute stress disorder may eventually be diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder if symptoms continue longer than 1 month. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and acute stress disorder could be caused by trauma like assault, terrorist attack, rape, war, severe physical or sexual maltreatment, natural disasters such as tornados or floods, robbery, home invasion, car accidents, etc. Not everyone who experiences a traumatic event develops acute stress disorder.
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