Collective trauma and stress after disasters

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Collective trauma and stress after disasters

This article was published on April 28th, 2020, in the Current Directions in Psychological Science journal. It was a kind of response to the effects of covid-19, and it served to help the general public about the effects of covid-19, and through the understanding of covid-19, it helped people as well find ways to deal with the issues which came along with covid-19. Therefore it is an essential article not only for Covid-19 purposes but also generally in any person’s life as it talks of core issues that affect a person’s psychology and emotional base to the point they might even break down. Herein is the summary of this article and how important it is in our daily lives.

In the first part, the article task of how the media coverage of traumatic issues and happenings affects the person’s mind and thoughts leads to psychological or emotional torture or positive emotional build-up. It is true that what a person listens to and what a person likes hearing every time form part of who they are and what they believe in. Therefore, if a person listens and watches only negative news from the news channels, the person will be only absorbing negative energy, which makes the personal thoughts and view of the world negative. However, suppose a person is engaged in viewing and watching positive happenings. In that case, the person is likely to have a positive life view, and therefore they will be motivated to be better and work towards positivism in society. For this kind of determination, the BMB (Boston marathon bombings) victims were interviewed, bringing out such results.

The second part discusses how emotions and psychology are so much a part of a human being. When a person faces an unpleasant experience, they will be able to express it through social media. This is true since during the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, it led to an unpleasant and sorrowful display of the whole incident in most of France’s citizens’ social media accounts. Apart from this, the article discusses the possible remedies and how important they are in stress management.

Even though the clinical psychological interventions are of great help in ensuring that the victims and those affected have better psychological functioning and better quality of life, it is not yet recorded if these efforts reduce mortality and morbidity. Some of the possible ways to deal with stressful conditions would be to engage in a computer game as a distractor. Therefore, engaging in computer games helps the mind re-focus on different things and makes it possible for a person to evade the burdensome thoughts related to something traumatic. Even though a computer game is an instant solution, there needs a solution for a long period.

Once a person can manage their stress levels over a period, they get to be over instances of stress and traumatic experiences they had before. However, this does not happen very fast, and therefore there is a need for care and for the person to be shown love to the maximum because it is through this that the person develops the ability to move on easily. However, when a person is left alone, they tend to overthink the issue. To some extent, they begin thinking that life is unfair, thus extending the healing period for more than six months, which is when a person can heal from such experiences.

In conclusion, we can say that it is important for any person to heal and stop living in the past. Even though there are suggestions that a person can forget about their past, this is easier said than done. Therefore it is a process of healing, and it also talks to the media to weigh between showing the news and the health of the individuals watching.

Work cited

“Collective Trauma and Stress Following Disasters: APS Journal Articles Publicly Available.” Association for Psychological Science – APS, www.psychologicalscience.org/news/collective-trauma-and-disaster-stress-research-publicly available.html. Accessed March 14th. 2021.

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