'traumatize' is a correct word and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe any psychological or mental distress caused by a traumatic or stressful experience, especially an experience involving physical harm. Example sentence: The accident traumatized the victim and left him with severe psychological distress.
(Lisa once told an interviewer that her mother would sometimes "traumatize" her because she is light-skinned — "and I'd remind her that she had chosen my father, I didn't").
The conventional wisdom is that lighter books — "Gone With the Wind" and "The Godfather" — make for better movies; it's the adaptations of serious literature like "The Great Gatsby," "Revolutionary Road," and "The Scarlet Letter" that tend to disappoint, and occasionally traumatize, viewers.
But if bingeing on "Friday Night Lights," "Gossip Girl," or "House of Cards" is sure to make you feel glassy-eyed, useless, and a little brain-dead, none of these shows has the power to psychically traumatize you.
Their plight became a sorry example of Uzbekistan's ability to alienate and traumatize its own people while trying to deal with the I.M.U.
Wiz Khalifa's nipples weren't "problematic," since men apparently can't traumatize anyone in the Grammys' eyes.
Kilner and a number of observers inside and outside the Army worry that the high rate of closeup killing in Iraq has the potential to traumatize a new generation of veterans.
The group also says the helicopters, which federal officials call the most efficient means to guide the herds to the corrals, traumatize the animals.
NICHOLAS BUCKWORTH New York To the Sports Editor: Re "Paying Tribute," April 17: I was only 7 when the World Trade Center was attacked and, like any second grader, could hardly understand why someone would want to harm and traumatize so many people.
While I found some people who defended Mr. Apotheker's management style —"He's a tireless worker who gives everyone a second chance," said Andre Boisvert, a former top software executive — I found just as many people who thought that Mr. Apotheker was likely to further traumatize the already demoralized H.P. staff.
He had probably been traumatized himself, and then in the classic fashion went on to traumatize others.
The alleged attack, and an occasion three years later when the accuser said Father Brennan exposed himself, combined to traumatize the man, he said, and led to a pattern of behavior that also included getting discharged from the Marine Corps and using drugs in an attempt to be rid of the pain of what he endured.
