Earlier I wrote about the direct link between the aspects of human behavior that make it easy for people to buy more than they could afford and the aspects of human behavior that inclines people to ignore specific risks of disasters.
In today’s NYTimes there is an article by Paul Krugman that really brought home just how closely the current economic situation parallels a large disaster. Tell me if this sound familiar?:
“There was a lot of soul-searching going on. One senior policy maker asked, “Why didn’t we see this coming?…Some people say that the current crisis is unprecedented, but the truth is that there were plenty of precedents, some of them of very recent vintage…Why did so many observers dismiss the obvious signs “
Out of context they could have been talking about the aftermath of any large storm, flood, any time a piece of infrastructure fails and causes harm.
There is important parallel that we need not to miss, though. Disasters are traumatic, and trauma is dangerous.
In large disasters 43% or more individuals can show signs of trauma which increases the negative effects of the initial disaster exponentially. This is recognized by the American Red Cross which mobilizes hundreds of Disaster Mental Health workers to a disaster affected region from the first moments that the disaster has taken place.
Disaster Mental Health Professionals study the causes of trauma. A person is more likely to show signs of trauma if they have undergone an experience in which the person feels that they, or a loved one was in mortal danger; needing help and feeling that no one reached out to assist; loss of income; forced relocation, or if the person has already been traumatized.
Thankfully, the economic crisis isn’t playing out in a way that a considerable number of people feel that they are in direct mortal peril—but there are definitely a considerable number of people who are experiencing loss of income, forced relocation, lack of social support.
Our bodies and minds respond to traumatic experiences in consistent ways, intense experiences lead to intense emotions, depression, and health effects. Some of the follow on effects of undergoing can be an increase in risky behaviors, addiction related problems from attempting to “self medicate” away from the feelings, the physiological effects can impact attendance and the ability to find employment, emotional changes can push loved ones away, individuals can lose their trust in society.
Losing ones job and or ones house may not seem like a dramatic event like an emergency, but it reminds me of how I felt in the weeks after September 11.
We were living in Alexandria, VA on the outskirts of Washington DC. We were close enough that our house shook when the plane hit the Pentagon. I followed pretty consistent behaviors for a stressful situation, my first instinct was to get in contact with the people most important to me. I tried and tried, but couldn’t reach my husband who was half a mile away, all of the phones were overloaded (now I know what I should have done).
I didn’t directly experience the attack, no one I knew was hurt in it, yet a month later I was in a doctor’s office explaining that my stomach constantly hurt, It felt hard to breath and I was having heart palpitations. Individuals do not need to be directly harmed to be hurt by an experience.
In number terms the economic crisis has the potential of directly and indirectly impacting more people than any disaster that has been experienced.
There is a lot of focus on providing help for the companies affected, and a lot of discussion about the need to create programs to help home owners, and looking for new jobs, but I haven’t seen any talk about the likely psychological responses we can expect to see, and any talk at all about programs to provide intervention and support to help people avoid making decisions that will hold them back, that will hold all of us back, for decades to come.
