Introduction

Abstract

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition triggered by seeing or experiencing an event that caused or threatened serious harm or death (National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), 2007. http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-research-fact-sheet/index.shtml; Mayo Clinic, 2011. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/post-traumatic-stress-disorder/DS00246). PTSD can be difficult to diagnose, but if left untreated, it can lead to a variety of serious personal, familial, and societal problems (e.g., domestic violence, suicide, unemployment). Current available therapeutic interventions for PTSD and major depression vary substantially in their effectiveness. Major impediments to the development of transformational interventions include a lack of basic disease-level knowledge, availability of biomarkers and translational tools, the clinical evidence to identify patients at-risk, and absence of personalized treatment approaches. The governments of the United States, United Kingdom and other countries have identified PTSD as a serious condition affecting many Service members returning from deployments. Many organizations have identified the need to develop new methods for detection and analysis of symptoms and for outreach to Service members suffering from psychological illnesses including PTSD. At present, a large percentage of Service members returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer clinical levels of major depressive disorder and/or PTSD. This book presents technologies demonstrating high accuracy in detection of PTSD signals in textual documents.