Questioning the PTSD diagnosis - what does it really tell us about depression?

A team of researchers in the USA is questioning the value of the PTSD diagnosis as the symptoms are found equally in depressed patients without trauma. But this is looking through the wrong end of the telescope. How much more useful it would be to ask whether depression might be caused by unpleasant mental or physical experience?
The all-or-nothing diagnosis of PTSD is not a reflection of human experience. PTSD symptoms can be found in depressed people because unpleasant events contribute to depression. Diagnostic categories attempt to be separate entities, but in reality there is a

continuum from 'normal' mental health through increasing anxiety and depression into trauma and psychosis. It is not therapeutically useful to try to separate these phenomena out; they are all symptoms of increasing arousal caused by a life where the emotional needs of the patient have been denied, sometimes violently. So it is not surprising that trauma symptoms crop up in depression - or that effective trauma treatments help many depressed people. Very serious depression cases almost always have some element of traumatic history, though it might not qualify for a PTSD diagnosis.
It is important to ask whether there have been events in a patient's history which, when remembered, make the heart speed up or make the patient feel sick or panicky. If the answer is yes, there is an unhelpful emotional and physical link to what should be just a piece of history, and that link needs to be removed. The fastest and most certain way to do this is the Human Givens Rewind technique. This is descended from Milton H Erickson via V/K dissociation. It normally resolves nightmares, panic attacks, flashbacks etc from PTSD straight away, and as it removes a source of arousal it is extremely helpful in alleviating depression.
Unfortunately, the PTSD diagnosis has a political dimension. In Britain a soldier who had been diagnosed with PTSD by the National Health Service has had his diagnosis removed by a military doctor. We recently detraumatised an Iraq war veteran who was waking up screaming from his nightmares several times a night, but he could not get a PTSD diagnosis from a military medical facility. The government has seen the economic consequences of admitting that PTSD is a problem in the US forces, and decided to apply the diagnostic criteria very tightly.
Ironically, it is not necessary to restrict diagnosis on cost grounds. Once you have an effective and rapid way to treat PTSD, and we have, you only have to ask whether there is a link between a memory in the past and an emotional / physical reaction in the present. If there is, de-traumatise.
The nightmares, panic attacks and flashbacks resolve directly in most cases with the Rewind technique - and depression responds at the same time.