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[PopTart]

Likot  Inodtishak is crafting some wood figurines when, all of a sudden, PTSD kicks in and he's "reliving" seeing all these dead bodies. What could be triggering him? Is it the stockpile of porcupine bones next to the workshop?

[Elderon]

I haven't noticed any triggers for reliving memories. For me it seems to just happened periodically, regardless of outside world.

[Shonai_Dweller]

It's a memory. The brain triggers it. At some point he was traumatised by seeing a raccoon die, or something, now he relives that memory periodically for the rest of his life.

It's a work in progress, there's an update coming fairly soon which adds the next layer of detail in which long-term memories can start to have less immediate impact on stress levels, but over time will alter their personalities. Dead bodies of strangers will have less immediate stress impact too.

[C4st1gator]

For all the possibilities and impact the memory system has, it is a bit too punishing on corpses.
Now, I'm not saying that seeing a corpse is pleasant, but you won't lose your mind from seeing a bunch of dismembered goblins, because your mind has several protection mechanisms in place:

• The mental impact does not scale linearly with the number of corpses. Instead it goes something like this: A corpse, two corpses, a bunch of corpses, a pile of corpses, a heap of corpses, a hill of corpses, a mountain of corpses. Each of these levels increases stress by one stress unit, while the number of corpses can go up exponentially, so stress level per corpse scales more along the lines of S(C) = log2(C) the sharp decline in stress growth makes one death a tragedy, but a million a grim statistic.
• The mental impact of seeing corpses decreases with increasing exposure to corpses. WWI veterans, for insance, were infamous for their dark humour. Seeing a corpse didn't faze them at that point. This may look something like: S(C,Cmax) = log2(C) * 1/(1-Cmax*adj), with Cmax being the total exposure to corpses and adj being and adjustment factor depending on personality.
• The power of rationalization allows humans to distinguish between friend or foe, aswell as random strangers. This means a dead beloved pet, friend, or worse, family member, may deeply unsettle our human's mind, while a random stranger will dampen the mood, but won't be enough for a human to break down in tears. The corpse may cause fear initially, but someone used to seeing the dead will be far less affected. The corpse of an enemy may have the least effect, since dead enemies are quickly rationalized away with something along the lines of "He would have killed me!". Time to put this into our function.
   S(C,Cmax) = Cadj * log2(C) * 1/(1-Cmax*Padj) so the adjustment is split into the personality adjustment Padj and the corpse adjustment Cadj, which depends on whose corpse it is, that we're observing.

[PopTart]

My suggestion: The impact of repeated "meetings" with the manager should be more permanent, depending on how good a consoler they are. The relivings should continue only if untreated or poorly treated. Also, other dwarfs besides those "in charge" should have the ability to target stressed and traumatized dwarfs. Can the tavern keeper currently console? Can family or friends?

Even though stressed dwarfs are... stressful for me as a player, it's been a lot of Fun and challenging having to deal with them after not having to do so for over a year. As always, I'm looking forward to seeing what develops!

[pamelrabo]

Unbalanced as it may be by now, I can expect a parent who sees a kid die to have sudden rememberings of the tragedy, for years.

We can expect close friends and family cause a greater impact than casualties of a battle, but then I remember how my grandpa would _never_ speak about the time he was in the war, for it was too painful for him.

[Moonshine Fox]

I would love if my entire fort didn't keel over and slip into depression and stumble around obliviously just because my military decided to clean up 5-6 crundles that kept breaching the cavern entrance...

[Saiko Kila]

It's even worse than reliving actual trauma. I was closely monitoring a child making an artefact. You would expect than finishing it would make the child happier. But just moments before finish, it gained two thoughts about joining a conflict. The "conflict" was just a scaring of some dwarves by giant bluejays (and vice versa) on the surface, well beyond the sight of the child. Something which happens all the time, and should have no real consequence, since the birds are completely not aggressive. But after making the artefact, the net change of stress was positive, i.e. it lowered happiness (the change happens periodically, and was triggered shortly after making artefact, stress rose from zero to +5).

Making an artefact was not enough to offset rumours of sighting of some benign beasts far, far away... It feels so unbalanced.

[Urist McVoyager]

Thankfully it's a placeholder and Toady's already fixed it for that release. However, my headcanon for your case is "those birds are flying around up there. I love my artifact! I don't want giant birds taking it."

[Admiral Obvious]

I'm fairly certain that one of my dwarfs had a breakdown because he kept repeatedly saw a corpse of a rat which (I think) got exploded when someone closed a door on it.

So, they kept seeing the rat corpse in the stockpile, and they kept remembering about seeing it, and eventually went brezerk after a period of 6 years.