Live News - A Survival Guide - International Federation of Journalists

CHAPTER 6Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder‘I wanted toswap placesand be the onewho was dead’"What hit me like asledgehammer was when Iwas working withsomebody who was killedand I wasn't — I didn'tknow how to handle thatat all.“I thought it was my fault,and was convincedeverybody else thought itwas my fault, and I wantedto swap places and be theone who was dead.“I’d heard of posttraumaticstress disorder,but thought it was anindulgent, ‘Nancy boy’thing. It was a terribleexperience and I becamevery moody and paranoid,socially dysfunctional andunable to work, and it wasto do with being alive. Theonly way I could get out ofit was to go and get help.“It was one of my bosses– significantly a woman –who said to me: ‘You looklike shit. You’re in a state,and I‘ve made anappointment for you to goand see somebody.’” ■Allan Little, BBC reporter,Freedom Forum panel 2001reporters and crews are at greater risk. Jeremy Bowen, a BBC correspondentfor 15 years, has covered around a dozen wars and conflicts.He told the conference how one finally got past his defences.“The thing that was qualitatively different for me was inLebanon, when the Israelis were withdrawing, when a valuedfriend and colleague of mine was killed in front of my eyes by theIsraelis. He was in his car and they blew it up with a tank shell. Iwas very close by. I was stuck there on the scene for a couple ofhours, unable to get out. It was appalling. It was the worst day ofmy life.“Afterwards my response was different to the way it had been incovering other conflicts. I had some of the classic symptoms ofstress. I had bad dreams. I was hyper-vigilant. I later discoveredwhat that was. I kept thinking something would fall on my head,or I’d start at sudden noises. I knew about the BBC counselling service.I thought I’d try it out and I found it really helpful. I only hadone really long session with the guy and spoke to him on thephone as well. He said, ‘Look here, your response is normal and youshould just be a bit concerned if it continues’. I found that helpful.It wasn’t magic. But it certainly was helpful.”Research commissioned by the Freedom Forum at the Universityof Toronto suggests that international correspondents who reporton wars and conflicts have almost the same risk of PTSD anddepression as army combat veterans. Dr Anthony Feinstein and histeam at the University of Toronto compared 140 war journalistsworking for North American or international media with a controlgroup of 69 journalists working on other kinds of stories. Theyasked about sadness, lack of enjoyment, loss of sleep, loss of selfworthand suicidal thoughts. They also asked about the extent towhich the journalists:◆ re-experience traumatic events through dreams, flashbacks orintrusive and often unwelcome recollections,◆ stay away from reminders of the trauma,◆ suffer physiological arousal such as increased heart rate, sweatingand anxiety.The team found that:◆ War journalists were three times more likely than the controlgroup to suffer post-traumatic stress symptoms.◆ An astonishing 53% were either single or divorced – a very bigdifference from the control group.◆ They drank more than the control group – men drank twice as90