Distressed – Mental Health Matters

When something terrible happens in the world, it’s not uncommon to scroll through social media or flip through television channels in search of news coverage. But such media exposure may fuel post-traumatic stress symptoms for years afterwards – and could also drive someone to consume further distressing media.

With high-consequence events where we do not know why they happened, there is a fundamental drive to want to consume information until you get your head around it. Research suggests it may be a function of threat avoidance or wanting to return to some kind of rational understanding of the world around us.

Roxane Silver at the University of California, Irvine, and her colleagues surveyed a representative sample of more than 4400 US residents in the days after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. Each person was also asked how many hours of related media coverage they consumed in three follow-up periods:

Six months after the bombing;
On its second anniversary; and
Five days after the 2016 mass shooting in the Pulse nightclub in Florida.

On average, the people surveyed consumed about 6 hours of media a day about the Boston bombing immediately after the event and a little more than 3 hours per day of media about the Pulse shooting.

Those who sought out more media about the bombing – whether or not they had a history of mental health conditions – were more likely to have trauma-related stress symptoms, such as upsetting thoughts, flashbacks and emotional distress, six months later (Thompson et al., 2019).

Two years after the bombing, such people were also more likely to worry about other events of mass violence occurring in the future, and consumed more coverage of the subsequent Pulse shooting.

References

Thompson, R.R., Jones, N.M., Holman, E.A. & Silver, R.C. (2019) Media Exposure to Mass Violence Events can Fuel a Cycle of Distress. Science Advances. 5(4), eaav3502. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aav3502.

Whyte, C. (2019) New Coverage Link to Trauma Symptoms. New Scientist. 27 April 2019, pp.16.

Mental health first aid (MHFA), like any other type of first aid, is the help given to a person before appropriate professional help or treatment can be obtained.

First aid of any type has the following aims:

To preserve life;
To prevent deterioration of any injury or illness;
To promote healing; and
To provide comfort to the person who is ill, injured, or distressed.

MHFA is the help given to someone experiencing a mental health problem before other help can be accessed.

The aims of MHFA are:

To preserve life;
To provide help to prevent the worsening of an existing condition;
To promote the recovery of good mental health;
To provide comfort to a person experiencing distress; and
To promote understanding of mental health issues.

MHFA does not teach people to be therapists. However, it does train people in:

How to ask about suicide;
How to recognise the signs of mental health problems or distress;
How to provide initial help; and
How to guide a person towards appropriate professional help.

Tag: Distressed

What is Mental Health First Aid?