Abstract

Both Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Personality Disorder (PD) share many common features in the way their sufferers have interacted with the law. The personality disordered patient may (because of their anti-social behaviour) come before the criminal courts where their social deviance is considered against a background of mental illness. The effect this sort of comparison has had in stigmatising all the mentally ill is sufficiently well understood to need no further elaboration here.