[Posttraumatic stress disorder endophenotypes: several clinical dimensions for specific treatments]

Posttraumatic stress disorder is a syndrome with a very complex clinical that it is useful to describe according to a multidimensional approach. Following a critical review of the international literature, we have been able to highlight the genetic supports of posttraumatic stress disorder in the perspective of returning to the source of the clinical of this syndrome in order to steer its treatment better. We consider in succession the neuromodulation pathways involving dopamine, serotonine and noradrenaline to describe the hyperdomaminergic, hyposerotoninergic and hypernoradrenergic endophenotypes of posttraumatic stress disorder. Neurogenetic studies have affirmed two essential proposals. On the one hand, the pharmacological treatment of psychotraumatic disorders can be very closely adjusted to the different endophenotypes. On the other hand, the psychotherapeutic approach retains all its importance in the sense that it is the subjective implication that generated the trauma, subjectivity interacting with a genetic heritage and environmental factors integrating a social context. The changing definition of posttraumatic stress disorder over time comes from scientific exploration in part determined by a sociocultural context and, reciprocally, the psychic trauma is caused by the collapse of reassuring social values which were considered as immutable. The clinical is not developed according to fixed references: the evolution of neurogenetic techniques changes our perception of psychic traumas and the therapeutic possibilities.