HASTerrorist attacks, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, the list of terrible events we face continues to grow. Disasters can threaten lives, cause economic loss and, of course, harm physical and mental health. The most common psychiatric condition experienced by disaster survivors is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It is defined as an acute reaction to a stressor, the duration and intensity of which may vary from one subject to another.
Post-traumatic stress disorder has become an important topic due to the large number of traumatic events that have occurred in recent years, such as the wave of attacks in France in 2015 and 2016 or the devastating floods in the Alpes-Maritimes. While survivors’ physical injuries can be identified and treated immediately, mental health issues, such as those found in post-traumatic stress disorder, are more invisible and risk being overlooked. This risk of neglect is even more true for the collateral victims of these traumas.
In fact, in our modern societies we are constantly informed of disasters of all kinds that occur around the world. This creates indirect exposure to traumatic events for an extremely large number of people. For this reason, more and more researchers are wondering about the presence of signs of post-traumatic stress disorder not only in the direct victims of a catastrophe, but also in the entire population indirectly exposed, through the media, to these terrible events. . This may be even more true among teenagers and young adults.
Anxiety and depression
Unfortunately, the war in Ukraine has given rise to several recent investigations into this topic. Abanoub Riad and his colleagues at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic and the University of London put 591 Czech students through a series of standardized tests to screen for anxiety and depression. The study demonstrates a moderate to severe level of anxiety and depression in all subjects, with a strong feeling of worry, more marked in women and in subjects highly exposed to conflict through the media.
Furthermore, the results clearly show that there is a positive correlation between social media use and higher levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms. The authors do not hesitate to conclude about the mental health risk of this media exposure to the conflict.
You have 30.61% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
