It
was Wednesday with PE class first thing. You were up early and with a
spring in your step off you skipped to school. The traffic had just
started so there were people milling on the main street, you greeted the
postman who always winked and smiled as he passed on. You were ahead of schedule
when you sensed a sudden, intense flash from behind, a roar wrapped itself
around your head, crushing your eardrums and the ground erupted all around. It threw you and you flew. You didn´t know what had touched you that morning, a fearful unknown, the utter confusion, a bomb they called it. You scrambled for your
schoolbag between stalled cars in suffocating dust. Emerging from the cloud you left frozen people behind but you had to get to school, you
were the captain of the team. Though you didn´t mention it, you
would never be a team player again no matter how much you tried.
Newspaper headlines declared last month, “Northern Ireland suicide rates
soar after peace deal” as if it were some great surprise.(1) Another
read “Drink and drugs fuelling Northern Ireland suicide rates” (2)
and even the author of the most recent study preached, “we seem to have
adjusted to peace by means of mass medication with anti-depressants, alcohol
and non-prescription drugs”.(3) Drink
and drugs are not the cause, or not that we haven´t been able to adjust to
peace, the problem is we still haven´t recovered from the civil war which raged
here for thirty years.
Figures show that men who grew up during the worst of the Troubles are
most at risk from suicide.(4) The
younger age group (15-24) which attracts most media attention, has a
trend line that has changed very little since the late 1970s. Now, fourteen
years on from the Good Friday Agreement it would appear the conflict is still
claiming victims and we´re not talking about frontline casualties here, such as
terrorists, police or army personnel, one in ten of the general population lost
a close relative to violence. Another study revealed half of over-45s whose
lives were touched by the conflict had signs of at least one treatable mental
health condition, concluding that an individual who experienced a traumatic
event is three times more likely to suffer from anxiety, depression and/or
alcohol abuse.(5)
Therefore, not surprisingly trauma experts at the University of Ulster also
found that Northern Ireland has one of the highest Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder (PTSD) rates in the world.(6)
If you think that PTSD, once referred to as “shell shock”, is just
related to Northern Ireland, Vietnam or the Iraq war then think again. It is
now believed that any event, which causes feelings of fear, helplessness or
horror, can trigger PTSD e.g. the rate of PTSD in adults who were in foster
care for one year between the ages of 14–18 was found to be higher than that of
combat veterans returning from the frontline.(7)
Experiencing sexual or physical abuse, witnessing violence and/or bullying all
have the potential to trigger a psychological trauma which is often longer
lasting and more damaging than the original physical trauma. It is not unknown
for an individual to survive a car crash, and then years later go on to take
his or her own life. "Human-inflicted harm - such as rape, assault, and
torture - also tends to be more traumatic than “acts of God” or more impersonal
accidents and disasters. The extent to which the traumatic event was
unexpected, uncontrollable, and inescapable also plays a role".(8)
Although not everyone who experiences such trauma will go on to develop
PTSD a significant proportion will suffer symptoms such as memory flashbacks,
nightmares or persistent replaying of events. These individuals are often
unwilling to talk about what has happened, they feel numb or that their life has
been changed by the event. Many of these reactions are the mind´s way of trying
to understand what has happened. However, the result is a change in normal
behaviour, problems concentrating or sleeping, anger, irritability or an over
vigilance in normal situations e.g. seeing danger around every corner. These
changes go on to affect relations with family and friends, make work and
everyday living difficult and foster a sense of isolation. These sufferers
also tend to self-harm e.g. cutting/burning because they want to feel again or block out painful memories.
Although the psyche is resilient there is only so much fear or stress a
person can tolerate. One theory explains PTSD as an adaptive response to danger
i.e. a reaction we have developed from our ancestors when we relied on the
group to survive. To better the group/tribe´s chances of survival, dangers and
traumatic experiences had to be shared so everyone could learn from them and
decide how to react in the future. The human nervous system, in response
to the experience of a personal danger, records the event and then assumes duties beyond our immediate
personal survival. These duties include:
• To protect the
individual from the immediate danger.
• To inform the
group of the danger.
• To need that
the group is protected from the danger.(9)
If any of these of these requirements are not met then the individual is
at risk of PTSD e.g. if they´re too young to understand/communicate or there is no tribe. People with healthy
homes and solid friendships are often able to walk and talk through their trauma with
love and support. By reaching out for help, sharing experiences one can avoid
negative feelings spiralling out of control. Whether in a familiar or
professional setting you can avoid PTSD developing by sharing the traumatic
event with others. However, some fail and many are children like those who
lived in N. Ireland at the height of the Troubles. Many of these young people
repressed their trauma. There was little known about PTSD back in the 1970s
& 80s where now grief councilors are called into schools if a child dies
under violent circumstances e.g. the recent school shootings in the US. The
function of these professionals is to firstly establish a sense of safety for
the traumatised child, to try and resolve the negative feelings that they may have
internalised and lead them to develop mechanisms for coping with future issues.
Ideally back then this help could have been aided by good parenting but
as we know many parents couldn´t even feed their children adequately let alone
repair their damaged psyches. The North for the majority was just about surviving day to day while living in a state of fear. It was a civil war and sectarianism was not a term that came up much in the conversation of an 8 or 9
year old. We, innocently, as young kids, played at war games but never thought we´d be participating in them for real. Yes, our conflict, like many,
continues to claim its victims but it´s no good berating us for
self-medicating on booze and drugs when our traumatised province has only
recently established a sense of safety. Like the counselled children we
now need the space, investment and time to resolve our internalised traumas,
only then will we be able to embrace peace and look forward to the future.
