Complex posttraumatic stress disorder: The need to consolidate a distinct clinical syndrome or to reevaluate features of psychiatric disorders following interpersonal trauma? Evangelia Giourou, Maria Skokou, Stuart P Andrew, Konstantina Alexopoulou, Philippos Gourzis, Eleni Jelastopulu Evangelia Giourou, Maria Skokou, Philippos Gourzis, Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of Patras, Rio Patras 26500, Greece Evangelia Giourou, Eleni Jelastopulu, Department of Public Health, School of Medicine, University of Patras, Rio Patras 26500, Greece Stuart P Andrew, Specialist Care Team Limited, 28 Northum- berland Street, Morecambe, Lancashire LA4 4AY, United Kingdom Konstantina Alexopoulou, School of Medicine, University of Patras, Rio Patras 26500, Greece ORCID number: Evangelia Giourou (0000-0001-6924-6197); Maria Skokou (0000-0002-8579-8933); Stuart P Andrew (0000- 0001-5224-0178); Konstantina Alexopoulou (0000-0002-9586- 9563); Philippos Gourzis (0000-0003-2001-4584); Eleni Jelastopulu (0000-0001-7499-4034). Author contributions: Giourou E contributed to the conception and designed this manuscript, conducted the literature review and was the lead author; Skokou M made critical revisions of the article’s draft and edited sections of the manuscript; Andrew SP contributed to conception of the article, edited sections of the article and performed the language editing as a native English speaker; Alexopoulou K contributed in conducting the literature review and to drafting sections of the manuscript; Gourzis P made critical revisions related to the intellectual content of the manuscript and edited sections of the manuscript; Jelastopulu E contributed to the conception and design of this manuscript, drafting the article and made critical revisions to the intellectual content of it. All authors have approved the final version of this manuscript. Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no competing interests to disclose. Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc/4.0/ Manuscript source: Invited manuscript Correspondence to: Eleni Jelastopulu, MD, PhD, Professor, Department of Public Health, School of Medicine, University of Patras, University Campus, Rio Patras 26504, Greece. jelasto@upatras.gr Telephone: +30-2610-969878 Fax: +30-2610-991606 Received: November 14, 2017 Peer-review started: November 14, 2017 First decision: December 8, 2017 Revised: December 29, 2017 Accepted: February 4, 2018 Article in press: Published online: March 22, 2018 Abstract Complex posttraumatic stress disorder (Complex PTSD) has been recently proposed as a distinct clinical entity in the WHO International Classification of Diseases, 11 th version, due to be published, two decades after its first initiation. It is described as an enhanced version of the current definition of PTSD, with clinical features of PTSD plus three additional clusters of symptoms namely emotional dysregulation, negative self-cognitions and interpersonal hardship, thus resembling the clinical features commonly encountered MINIREVIEWS  March 22, 208|Volume 8|Issue | WJP|www.wjgnet.com Submit a Manuscript: http://www.wjgnet.com/esps/ DOI: 0.5498/wjp.v8.i.000 World J Psychiatr 208 March 22; 8(): 00-00 ISSN 2220-3206 (online) World Journal of Psychiatry WJP