The Effects Of Terrorist Attacks And Natural Disasters On Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

12 Pages 3035 Words

ter when a fire spread through 12,000 acres on May 18, 1996 (Benight and Harper, 2002). Many homes were lost and the entire town was evacuated for several days. Three months later in the same town a severe flood destroyed
many of the town’s vital services and businesses including transportation, water supply and electricity, as well as killing some of the town’s inhabitants (Benight and Harper, 2002). These disasters undoubtedly affected the community shown in the study done by Charles Benight and Michelle Harper. Where the residents completed questionnaires between three and eight weeks after the disaster and after one year the 46 residents where tested again. In both polls the outcome of PTSD was significant (Benight and Harper, 2002).
Along with the idea of natural disasters, terrorism has arisen as another key factor that can induce PTSD as well as alter an individual’s view of the world. In recent years the fear of terrorist attacks in the United States has increased because of the scale of mass destruction individuals caused September 11th and amplified media coverage of such events (Meisenhelder, 2002). In Okalahoma City on April 19, 1995, a federal building was bombed killing over 100 people and children. It was, at the time, the biggest terrorist incident in the United States (Brown et al., 1999). On September 11, 2001, there were three severely traumatic events that took place simultaneously. These three terrorist attacks occurred at the World Trade Center in New York City, Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon in Washington D.C., leaving an incredible and undeniable impact on many American citizens (Speckhard, 2003). The size of the attacks and the aftermath and were on a much larger scale, as over 3,000 people were killed. With the advancement of technology, both ...