Mr Bates and the post office: The implications of the UK post office scandal for the taxonomy of trauma.

Abstract

Objective: To explore the psychopathology of the victims of the UK Post Office scandal and the extent to which this can be adequately described by current classification of traumatic stress symptoms.

Design: Standard clinical interviews for the purposes of preparing medico-legal reports.

Setting: Face to face and virtual interviews.

Participants: Victims of the Post Office Scandal, postmaster's and postmistress's wrongly accused of theft.

Main outcome measures: ICD-10 diagnostic criteria.

Results: All the subjects had experienced life changing traumatic reactions which were inadequately captured by current diagnostic criteria.

Conclusions: The current taxonomy of trauma fails to capture the diversity of symptoms experienced by the postmasters and we argue that a formulation based approach should be employed, especially in the court room. There remains inadequate research exploring the impact of wrongful conviction on the mental state of victims.