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Any near death experience (real or perceived) can do it

Makes sense. Maybe it's a question of severity. In WW1 British doctors thought it was a physical neurological condition caused by the concussion of artillery shells. They noticed that soldiers had trembling “rather like a jelly shaking”; headache; tinnitus, or ringing in the ear; dizziness; poor concentration; confusion; loss of memory; and disorders of sleep.

While there are many things that can cause a person to suffer from this (life and limb type scenarios) I'm questioning the validity of wide spread self diagnosed "PTSD".

Those are all symptoms of a concussion. In my understanding, anxiety attacks are one of the primary symptoms of PTSD.

I just cut and pasted those from a Smithsonian article. Docs saw those symptoms in soldiers that hadn't been near shelling which clued them in that it wasn't caused by the concussion from artillery. Anxiety attacks in 1915 were probably just labelled as cowardice.

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