Your feelings or behaviour after having witnessed a traumatic event or experienced a serious threat to your life or well-being may be troubling you most or all of the time. The following are common symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD):
- reliving aspects of the event, through nightmares, or feelings that the event is happening again (a kind of continuous 'action replay');
- avoiding doing anything that reminds you of the trauma, e.g. a person traumatised by an attack on the street may find it difficult to go out alone; and
- heightened irritability, sleep disturbance, outbursts of anger, and sudden shock reactions.
Bullying can also lead to serious ill health effects, similar to those described here.