Term or phrase for a traumatic or life-changing event
What is the word or phrase that describes a traumatic event that stops or changes a person’s mode of living?
Something like an illness or something like happened to Tom Hanks in the movie Cast Away. Or even Tom Hanks’s girlfriend, who was going to school to get her doctorate but “put everything on hold” when Chuck (Tom Hanks’s character) disappears in a plane crash.
I’m almost looking for a psychological term here, and I want to study more about the topic, but I don’t have a term or phrase for it that I can use to research it.
You could try one of these:
crossroads
pivotal point
defining moment
critical juncture
cusp
Although it's not used exclusively by psychologists and psychiatrists, a watershed moment is appropriate as well as most of the other suggestions made. If you do a Google search for watershed moment, you'll find psychological usages in many of the hits.
An Epochal event is one that has far-reaching implications in one's life. The free dictionary lists momentous as a synonym, so a momentous event is again a happening or a circumstance with the capacity to alter the course of one's life.
- Turn over point
- Milestone
- Key point
The example you give is not a mild fork-in-the-road, but rather a "calamity" or "catastrophe"
or
"calamitous event" or "catastrophic event"
From Merriam-Webster.com:
Ca-lam-i-ty
Pronunciation: \kə-ˈla-mə-tē\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English calamytey, from Latin calamitat-, calamitas; perhaps akin >to Latin clades destruction Date: 15th century
1 : a state of deep distress or misery caused by major misfortune or loss
2 : a disastrous event marked by great loss and lasting distress and suffering >"calamities of nature", "an economic calamity"
and
Main Entry: ca·tas·tro·phe
Pronunciation: \kə-ˈtas-trə-(ˌ)fē\
Function: noun
Etymology: Greek katastrophē, from katastrephein to overturn, from kata- + strephein to turn Date: 1540
1 : the final event of the dramatic action especially of a tragedy
2 : a momentous tragic event ranging from extreme misfortune to utter overthrow or ruin
3 a : a violent and sudden change in a feature of the earth b : a violent usually destructive natural event (as a supernova)
4 : utter failure : fiasco — cat·a·stroph·ic \ˌka-tə-ˈsträ-fik\ adjective — cat·a·stroph·i·cal·ly -fi-k(ə-)lē\ adverb