| Subject: Terrorism and Trauma |
Author:
S
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Date Posted: 10:18:32 12/30/01 Sun
I'm throwing this out there, not because I want my friends to play therapist (I have a good one), but because I want to talk about what's going on with our country psychologically in the aftermath of 911.
This is from an abstract. My friend who is a psychologist gave me a copy of the article a couple of months ago. She found the whole thing fascinating because it is a new way of understanding the widespread impact of a mad-made disastor.
http://www.nyam.org/response/citations.html
Oklahomans reported higher rates (about double) of increased alcohol use, smoking more or starting smoking. They reported more stress (about double), psychological distress (about double), post-traumatic stress-disorder components, and intrusive thoughts (double) related to the bombing than in the control area. Oklahomans also reported higher rates of seeking help for their stress or taking steps to reduce stress. The differences persisted into 1996, more than a year after the bombing. CONCLUSION: The exposure to the bombing was widespread, including more than half the adults in the metropolitan area surrounding Oklahoma City. The psychological effects were high and, while decreasing, persisted more than a year after the bombing. Primary care practitioners should screen their patients, who may normally not be considered victims, for exposure to the effects of a terrorist disaster for an extended period of time.
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Forgive me if I digress for a moment into the personal. I was extremely traumatized by the OKC bombing. I wouldn't say that my acute experience of that trauma lasted any longer than anyone around me, though, and I did not "live" with it on a daily basis after the first six months or so.
I did have some lasting effects. I would feel panicked if I had to drive next to a Ryder truck or if one was parked in my neighborhood. I understood this panic was irrational, though, and it did not consume me. Still, it was a somewhat uncontrollable knee-jerk reaction.
When I heard about the terrorist attacks on 911, I went into a state of hyper-stress, and I did have to be medicated to come out of it. My doctor described it as "survivor-mode." I'd been through one similar disaster already. I felt personally threatened because my brother, whom I am very close to, works for the Air Force, often in the Pentagon, and I didn't know where he was for hours after hearing the Pentagon was hit.
What was interesting after all was said and done, though, was not so much what happened to me but that my doctor and my psychologist friend kept giving me more and more information to show that there were an enormous number of people who lived in proximity to OKC in 1995 who had experienced the same reaction I did to 911.
What they concluded from this was that the psychological toll of 911 would be absolutely unprecedented. The entire country has some degree of personal connection to either New York and DC, and even without a feeling of personal connection to these cities, we all felt our own security threatened.
What I've realized about myself is that it isn't the visual cue of airplanes that triggers anxiety but the visual cue of Arab men instead. I know this is irrational, as I'm sure most people do. But I think this is a very real part of what's happening in our country as a whole right now.
I don't have any deep insights on this. It's just something running through my head. I wondered if anybody else had been musing on similar things.
S
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Re: Terrorism and Trauma