| Summary: | There is an ongoing debate in the mental health field over whether mental disorder diagnosis should take contextual factors into account (Horwitz & Wakefield, 2007). However, it is unclear whether people are actually influenced by context when identifying disorders. Research suggests that clinicians, clinical trainees, and lay people explain away the abnormality of mental disorders in causal context (Ahn, Novick, & Kim, 2003), but whether causal context also leads to
fewer diagnoses has not yet been determined. In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5; APA, 2013), some causal context is required for the diagnosis of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD); specifically, the experience of a traumatic event (e.g., killing a civilian in combat). On the other hand, recent survey and interview data indicate that the onset of PTSD symptoms (e.g., exaggerated startle response) is not predicted most reliably by a traumatic event, but
rather by a severe internal reaction (e.g., extreme fear; Boals & Schuettler, 2009). Therefore, in the current work, we investigated the extent to which clinicians, clinical trainees, and lay people are influenced by the context of a traumatic event, a severe reaction to an event, or both when diagnosing PTSD.
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