Major Spoilers for Harry Potter 1-5. Trigger Warning for depression & PTSD.
I had a friend who was also a big Harry Potter fan and she used to joke about how “emo” Harry was at the start of book 5. I disagreed, as someone who struggled with mental health issues, I believed he was depressed.
My friend was never convinced, but now that I’m a psych student in university, I decided to actually look into it. Turns out there isn’t enough in the text to diagnose Harry with depression, there is, however, enough to diagnose him with PTSD as per the DSM-5 diagnostics.
Firstly, he clearly experienced trauma in the graveyard, both directly when he feared for his own life at the hands of Voldemort and secondhand as he witnessed the death of his friend, Cedric.
Harry is constantly on edge over the summer, thinking and worrying about Voldemort every day and barely sleeping. He has recurring nightmares of Cedric dying, even crying out for him in his sleep.
Despite Dudley bullying him his whole life, for the first time Harry starts to act violent towards him, shoving him into a wall and threatening him with his wand. (PTSD can present itself as violent actions particularly in males.) At school, Harry continues to have angry outbursts towards both his friends and enemies alike.
Harry also shows avoidant behavior as he doesn’t want to talk about Cedric and detachment as he isolates himself from his friends: not telling them about things such as his scar hurting over the summer, the detention with Umbridge (until Herminone sees his hand) when in the past he used to share everything with them.
All of the above are symptoms of PTSD; if you would like to see the proof (quotes from book) or how these points line up to the criteria in the DSM-5, I actually wrote a full paper on this topic for my psych course that I have posted in its entirety on under the “…and More” tab. But this is why I believe Harry does suffer from PTSD in book 5, and with the amount of clear evidence, I believe Rowling did it on purpose.
Disclaimer: I am not a psychologist nor do I have a degree in psychology yet. The only sources I used were the HP books themselves and the DSM-5.
Life Is Just A Blur 