element concludes that the failure of help sources, not learned helplessness, accounts for why many battered women remain with their abusers. Under the survivor theory, the best method for helping battered women is to increase funding for battered women's assistance programs and agencies and educate the public about the harmful effects of domestic abuse.III. Battered Women's Syndrome Equals Post Traumatic Stress DisorderAlthough the DSM-IV does not recognize battered women's syndrome as a distinct mental illness or disorder, some experts maintain that battered women's syndrome is just another name for post traumatic stress disorder, which the DSM-IV recognizes. The post traumatic stress disorder theory is also applied to individuals who were never exposed to domestic abuse, and, in the domestic abuse ambit, does not exclusively focus on the battered woman's perception of helplessness or ineffective help sources to explain why she stayed with her batterer. Instead, the theory focuses on the psychological disturbance an individual suffers after exposure to a traumatic event. In 1980, the American Psychiatric Association added the post traumatic stress disorder classification to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders III, a manual used by mental health professionals to diagnose mental illness. Although the diagnosis was controversial at the time, post traumatic stress disorder has gained wide acceptance in the mental health community and revolutionized the way professionals regard human reactions to trauma. Prior to the disorder's inception, experts attributed the cause of emotional trauma to individual weakness. However, with the advent of the theory of post traumatic stress disorder, experts now attribute the etiology of emotional trauma to an external stressor, not a weakness in the psyche of the individual. Since 1980, the American Psychiatric Association has revised the criteria for diagnosing post traumatic stress...
