Research Finds Assocation Between 9/11 Television Viewing And Increases In Stress
April 19, 2007
Dream journals being kept by students in a college psychology class have
provided researchers with a unique look at how people experienced the events of
9/11, including the influence that television coverage of the World Trade Center
attacks had on people's levels of stress.
Reported in the journal Psychological Science, the study data finds that
for every hour of television viewed on Sept. 11 - with some students reporting
in excess of 13 hours watched - levels of stress, as indicated by dream content,
increased significantly. In addition, the study found that time spent talking
with family and friends helped individuals to better process the day's horrific
events.
"We had not set out to conduct a scientific study of TV viewing and
trauma," says lead author Ruth Propper, PhD, an Associate Professor of
Psychology at Merrimack College in North Andover, Mass. "But it so happened
that students enrolled in one of my courses during the fall 2001 semester were
already in the process of keeping dream journals on a nightly basis. As the
events of 9/11 were unfolding, I realized there was a valuable opportunity to
find out what impact both media coverage and social interactions were having on
individuals throughout the course of this tragedy."
So, on September 12, Propper distributed a questionnaire to her students asking
them to report on their activities of the day before, including the amount of TV
they had watched, the amount of radio they had listened to, and the amount of
time they had spent talking about the experience with family and friends.
"What distinguishes these findings is that they occurred in
'real-time,'" adds coauthor Robert Stickgold, PhD, a sleep researcher in
the Division of Psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Associate
Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. "Because we have the
students' pre-9/11 dreams with which to compare, we can draw more reliable
conclusions about our post-9/11 findings."
Dreams are a reflection of the way the mind is processing and sorting the day's
events, and depending on a person's state of mind, will contain different
images. For the purposes of this study, the authors separated dream content into
four categories: dreams containing specific references to 9/11 (smoke,
explosions, police, box cutters, etc.); dreams with generalized threatening
content (which made people fearful even though they didn't contain specific
references to 9/11); dreams containing broadly related themes related to 9/11
(for example, disasters in general, rather than the 9/11 disaster specifically);
and, dreams with strong negative emotional content (which elicited general
feelings of anger, fear, or sadness).
"People's dreams can function as a measure of how much distress they are
feeling and how well or poorly they are coping," says Stickgold. "If,
in your dreams, you are still seeing specific traumatic images - buildings
collapsing, fire burning, people jumping - then it means that these stressful
events are not being adequately processed. But, if you're seeing tangential
events in your dreams - for example, a hurricane rather than the specific 9/11
images - it indicates that your brain is trying to make sense of the trauma and
that you are coping successfully."
Not surprisingly, the researchers found that in the days and weeks following the
attacks the students' dreams were twice as likely to contain at least one of the
four "content features" as they had prior to 9/11. But, says Propper,
"Our next question was, 'Is there an explanation for why some individuals'
dreams contained specific images of 9/11 and others didn't?'"
So, the authors turned to the questionnaires.
The questionnaire responses showed that throughout the day of Sept. 11, students
spent between 0 and 2.5 hours listening to the radio. They spent between one and
12 hours - an average of 5.9 hours - talking about the events with family and
friends. And they spent between 1.5 and 13 hours watching television news
coverage of the attacks, an average of 6.5 hours.
"When we compared these responses with the dream journal entries, we
discovered that for each hour of TV viewing a subject reported, there was a
statistically significant six percent increase in the proportion of the dreams
containing a specific reference to the attacks," says Propper. Among the
individuals who watched less than three hours of television there were no
specific references at all.
At the same time, the authors found that the greater the amount of time students
spent talking about the 9/11 events with family and friends, the greater the
likelihood their dreams contained "thematic" images, rather than
specific images. "This suggests that by talking through traumatic events,
perhaps you are better able to get past the trauma and to integrate it into the
broader framework of your life," explains Propper.
"Repeated viewing of horrific images may result in increased levels of
stress and trauma in the general population," the authors write in their
conclusion. "[And] insofar as watching television replaces talking with
others about such events, these undesired consequences may be amplified. In
light of these findings, news broadcasters might consider whether repetitious
broadcasting of traumatic images is actually in keeping with their goal of
serving the public. The public, in turn, might consider the benefits of talking
about traumatic events with friends and family."
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In addition to Propper and Stickgold, coauthors
include Merrimack College student Raeann Keeley, and Stephen D. Christman, PhD,
of the University of Toledo in Ohio.
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is a patient care, research and teaching
affiliate of Harvard Medical School and ranks third in National Institutes of
Health funding among independent hospitals nationwide. BIDMC is clinically
affiliated with the Joslin Diabetes Center and is a research partner of the
Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. BIDMC is the official hospital of the Boston
Red Sox. For more information, visit http://www.bidmc.harvard.edu/.
Merrimack College is a selective, independent four-year Catholic college
offering liberal arts, business, science, and engineering programs within a
residential setting. Merrimack's distinguished faculty members teach a talented
student body in a learning environment vigorously committed to the transforming
values and benefits of the liberal arts. In the Augustinian tradition,
Merrimack's community embraces scholarship, service to others, and provides
students with opportunities to develop intellectually, spiritually, socially,
and ethically. http://www.merrimack.edu/.
Contact: Bonnie Prescott
Beth Israel Deaconess
Medical Center
Medical News Today: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com