Unless you're well-versed with the concept of PTSD, either through research you've done, or because you suffer from it yourself, or because you have a close friend who does, you should be careful talking about it dismissively like this. The popular conception of PTSD is a caricature. In reality, we've only recently begun seriously diagnosing and investigating it, and getting a sense of its prevalence.

In particular, the notion that a person reporting PTSD who hasn't been "observably" (in this case, through the details of a TechCrunch post) crippled by it isn't really suffering from it is both false and pretty offensive.

There really needs to be a guideline on HN about comments diagnosing (or dismissing the diagnosis of) mental illness in other commenters and the subjects of stories. These comments happen with some regularity, and they are never productive.

Indeed, a lot more people have ptsd than is generally guessed because there is a great variety of life-altering trauma than people imagine. The caricature of ptsd is that it's something that veterans and rape victims have. It's too serious for anyone else to even think about having. It takes over your life and makes you into a crazy person, or nearly so.

The reality is that these are just the most extreme cases of ptsd. Many people who have suffered through comparatively more minor traumas nevertheless exhibit ptsd symptoms that can affect their quality of life in a daily basis. For example, emotional trauma in childhood can easily lead to the core ptsd symptoms such as irritability, isolation, hypervigilance, anxiety, flashbacks, etc. But because these are due to events considered less serious than combat or violent physical assault they can often go untreated and ignored.

For the record, this is the exact statement in the article:

For a year after Pollock groped me, I experienced what I now realize were PTSD-like symptoms. I had not anticipated them and was completely unprepared to have intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, and anxiety attacks in situations or around people that, for one reason or another, triggered memories of the incident, which took place on October 7, 2015.

You are being incredibly dismissive of the piece and part of your justification is the term PTSD. You feel it is over the top. When the inaccuracy of your own statement is corrected, you double down.

This does not look like a good faith argument. It looks like an excuse to be dismissive.

Mental illness is ultimately a personal issue that affects everyone very differently. You get a picture of this with how the same SSRI or other medication can have wildly different responses in people.

I wouldn't be so flippant and dismissive of terms like PTSD and Depression. For the person suffering them they are going to be very real and different than everyday sadness or misery. Even if for us outsiders they don't meet some documented guidelines of what they are.