What makes ‘bad news’ really bad?
Here are a few recent headlines:
“Australia has lost an estimated one billion of its signature animals and many of its unique species may go extinct.”
“The political parties in the US (and elsewhere) are locked in dysfunctional conflict and calling each other traitors.”
“The Iranians shoot down a Ukrainian passenger jet with the loss of all on board.”
“The suicide rate in the US is escalating, opioid misuse is happening on epidemic proportions.”
“The increasing depression and mental ill-health stats are truly frightening.”
“80% of medical students are already burnt out.”
“Economists such as Nobel laureate Paul Krugman declare that a world-wide recession is inevitable.”
“99% of climate scientists now say that we have reached the tipping point and that the consequences of global warming will come sooner than expected and be much worse.”
I could go on. For the most part these headlines don’t come from obscure websites or even tabloids specializing in sensationalism. Some come from the mainstream media—such as the NY Times, the Washington Post, the BBC, Le Mond or the Australian Financial Review—or from peer-reviewed academic papers.
- Last week Tribe member Evelyne asked me to write a series of articles on dealing with bad news. She was quite clear about what she wanted me to write about, so I will. There will be four articles in this series:How continuing bad news affects us
- How to manage the effect on children
- How to give hope and encouragement to those affected
- How to manage and lead in a time of constant bad news and crisis.
Let’s start the series with some science—I am, after all a scientist, as well as a clinical psychologist.
Back in 2001 a terrible thing happened, a bunch of terrorists flew hijacked jetliners into New York’s Twin Towers, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania. The death toll was well over 3000, including some 400 firefighters and policemen.
The images of the attack were replayed endlessly on TV, on cable and on the internet. That it might have been much worse (there were between 14,000 and 19,000 people in the towers at the time), got lost in the repeated carnage coverage.
Those directly involved suffered greatly from physical and emotional distress. The survivors who managed to escape, the firemen and the police who had to deal with the situation suffered in terms of their mental and physical health. To a large extent they found help and encouragement from supportive people. Their plight was understood.
Less understood was the plight of those who were what I call the “secondary victims,” those who were the victims not of the event but of the news of the event. There was a huge increase in the rate of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among those who witnessed the images of the attack multiple times and were neither survivors nor rescuers. And this traumatic reaction was not just in the immediate aftermath of the event. Many developed symptoms two, three, and even four years afterward.
They became the secondary victims. TV, cable, images on social media victimized them. Those who only heard radio reports or read about the attack in the press were not so traumatized.
The same phenomenon was observed among those who witnessed the TV and other reportage of the Iraq war, the hurricanes and floods of a couple of years ago and many other similar events.
In people I know all around the world I am already seeing worrying symptoms of anxiety due to images of the devastation and loss of wildlife caused by the Australian bushfires. They —like millions of those who witnessed the Twin Towers collapse—include people in the US, Hong Kong and the UK.
Typical is the reaction of a Tribe member in Hong Kong, which has been suffering its own troubles: “We keep getting updates on the fires in Australia and I personally can’t take it anymore. The pictures of the fires, firefighters and suffering animals and reports of casualties are just very hard for me.”
Many studies have shown that this secondary trauma—that felt by people who only witness the images on news reports or social media—can be as devastating as that suffered by the police, the firefighters and the survivors of the Twin Towers. But it’s largely unrecognized and they are not generally offered the support needed to recover.
Traumatic stress can affect the amygdala (the brain’s fear center where traumatic memories are stored), the hippocampus (the main memory center of the brain) and the prefrontal cortex (our seat of conscious thought). It can cause lasting changes in these areas. Worse still, these changes can lead to increased cortisol (the main stress hormone) responses to subsequent stressors. For example, watching images of the bushfires can lead to a heightened cortisol-driven reaction to a stress-producing situation, even a comparatively minor one, years later.
This is because in a trauma-affected brain the amygdala becomes larger and more active, and the hippocampus smaller (one of the effects of this is that you literally forget how to deal with a stressful situation). There is also less functioning in the prefrontal cortex (you can’t think or reason so well and mental tasks that were easy before the exposure to trauma may seem to become impossibly difficult).
Should a child be prevented from watching news containing these images? Absolutely. Should you avoid it? Absolutely. Hearing about it on the radio is considerably less traumatic.
Young children exposed to secondary trauma can show behavioral problems which are very difficult for parents to cope with and which can lead to life-long problems. Their memory function and their cognitive abilities can also be severely affected. In adults it can lead to alcoholism, drug addiction, depression, heart disease and a whole range of stress-related issues including suicide.
Every bit of additional bad news adds to the problem. If you’re traumatized by the images of the dying animals or the ruined homes or the stranded survivors on beaches (as Alicia and I nearly were) while the inferno destroys their homes and businesses then the sight of the dysfunction in Congress can be something which sends you over the brink into despair.
In November 2016 most Democrats thought Clinton was going to be the next US President. Instead they found themselves saddled with a result that they saw as potentially disastrous. Many were traumatized in the same way as the viewers of the Twin Towers attack or the Australian bushfires. They watched endless analysis of the disaster. They felt powerless, they felt personally attacked. In the brains of those secondary victims the kind of changes I mentioned above would’ve begun to take place.
The trauma of the defeat may well make them less likely to vote this November. I have heard so many of them say: “What’s the point, Trump’s going to win anyway.”
Workers who have lost multiple jobs can be deeply traumatized. But even for those who still have reliable jobs, each significant mass lay-off, each major episode of income insecurity and video reportage of families in despair they witness in the media adds up to a potentially traumatizing experience.
The level of the trauma in any individual depends to a large extent on whether they suffered childhood abuse or neglect or are genetically predisposed to depression or anxiety. However, that’s probably 30% of the population.
Of course, there is hope, even for that 30%. There are treatments that can often reverse the damage. Most importantly a nexus of supportive relationships can mitigate the stress and repair some of the affected areas of the brain. This is largely through the effect of another powerful neurochemical, oxytocin, which is part of the brain’s reward and bonding system. This comes into play when the victim feels that they have the support of those they care about.
In other articles I will show you how you can help those victims affected by either primary or secondary trauma. If you’re the one affected, I will explain how you can express your relational needs to those who are in a position to help you and, in doing so, begin the process of curing yourself.
Anyway, if you have been, thanks for reading.
Dr Bob