The Newtown Tragedy:
Associated Post Traumatic Stress Disorder That Effects Adults Who See This Tragedy on Their TV’s and Computers (Part 1 of 3)
These blogs are geared to adults that have, what I call, “Associated Post Traumatic Stress Disorder”, people who become traumatized as a result of their exposure to the extensive media coverage. The blogs will discuss: emotional and physical symptoms as well as giving six different approaches use to treat this disorder.
Of course there are no words that convey the horror of what happened at Sandy Hook the elementary school, in Newtown Connecticut. Children and families will bare the emotional scares of this event for their whole lives. There is another group of folks that may also have become traumatized the adult “onlookers” who though are not directly involved have been emotionally brought into the nightmare as a result of the media coverage (including internet and You Tube.) Most of the attention has been paid to the impact on the children, in this article I want to talk about the impact this has had on the adults who have not been directly involved, but have been exposed to event on a regular basis.
A place to start is to ask the questions how much is the person’s response a ‘normal’ grieving reaction and how much as become traumatic and has caused the individual to become dysfunctional. The media’s constant focus on the events and the reaction to those events, could well cause folks who are emotionally vulnerable, to have a response that will make them unable to cope with their world. Here are some of the symptoms that people experience when they are suffering from PTSD.
In the next blog I will give you the Situational, Emotional and Physical Symptoms for Associative PTSD and in the third and last blog in this series, I will give six different treatment approaches for the disorder.