Iswitch on the television. A man lies writhing in agony in front of two burning vehicles. There has been a car bomb at the Coalition Headquarters in Baghdad. Another man is rushed off on a stretcher. It looks like someone has dipped him head first in a barrel of ketchup.
It's Sunday night. I want something a bit lighter. I flick to a different channel. A man in an operating theatre, his face severely bruised, is having his eyelid spliced open with a scalpel. I'm not sure if this is a documentary about face-lifts or a drama. It's hard to tell.
ILLUSTRATION: MOUNTAIN PEOPLE
I switch off the television. I've just seen two horrific incidents which, given the clarity of the digital images, could just as well have taken place in my living room, yet I'm apparently unmoved. But am I unaffected? Is this blitzkrieg of violent images doing something to my psyche? Richard Restak, author of The New Brain: How the Modern Age is Rewiring Your Mind, thinks it is.
"I'm convinced that constant exposure to visual depictions of suffering, conflict and violence creates dysfunctional circuits within areas of the brain that mediate emotion," he says.
The result, he says, is "various forms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), desensitization, feelings of unreality and detachment that cause one to respond to real tragedy as if it were a film, and various avoidance reactions ranging from phobias to emotional burnout."
Restak believes the question is no longer "does watching violence on television and film affect children?" That case has been cogently made.
The question is: Do these violent images affect adults, too? He says that to deny that violent images have an effect on our minds is to deny an important part of reality.
"Our reality is created for us by the media -- our ideas of what's right and wrong, how we behave, how we respond," he says.
Let's take a look at what happens in the brain when it is confronted with a violent or threatening situation. First the limbic system -- the center of our emotional expressions -- springs into action. Included in the limbic system is the amygdala, the seat of our "fight or flight" response. But mediating this binary impulse is our prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that deals with social rules. The limbic system houses the id, and the prefrontal cortex houses the ego.
Jordan Grafman, chief of the cognitive neuroscience section of the American National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke found that people who have damage to their prefrontal cortex lose some inhibition and may be more prone to aggression.
"We also think that when you become aggressive, limbic structures may inhibit your prefrontal cortex, so you can concentrate on winning the fight without worrying about the social consequences," Grafman says.
Restak says there is evidence that violent images on TV can be "equally effective" in destabilizing this balance between the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex.
In the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, William Schlenger, a psychologist at the Research Triangle Institute in America, found a correlation between those who reported symptoms of PTSD in New York and the number of hours they watched TV reports, irrespective of whether they knew someone who had died during the attack.
According to the DSM-IV, the diagnostic bible for mental disorders, PTSD causes the sufferer to have "recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections" in the form of dreams or flashbacks, insomnia, hyper-vigilance and outbursts of anger.
"We don't yet know to what extent the extensive coverage of 9-11 may have contributed to the onset of chronic symptoms of PTSD," says Jeffrey Johnson, associate professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University.
"However, frequent viewing of graphic depictions of violence may increase the likelihood that vulnerable individuals may be traumatized," he says.
And, as Johnson has found, the effects of stressful life events appear to be cumulative.
"Police officers, military personnel and emergency personnel who witness traumatic events are also at elevated risk of PTSD," he says.
While not all obsessive TV viewing of violent incidents triggers PTSD, anxiety and emotional burnout remain a real issue.
Although your chance of being a victim of crime in Britain is at its lowest in 20 years, people remain fearful. We demand visible police presence to allay our fears, even if their presence does not reduce crime. Violent images create anxiety. If a beaten-up pensioner is on the cover of a tabloid, no figures from the British Crime Survey are going to convince you that Britain is safe. The impact of the picture is visceral, and as Restak says, "requires no thought or analysis."
"A news report of a rape may be sufficient to cause a rise in anxiety for women living in the area," says Barrie Gunter, a media psychologist at the University of Sheffield in southern England.
"The way this media effect operates is through what psychologists call the `availability heuristic.' That is, we are notoriously bad at making accurate frequency estimates or risk assessments concerning the likelihood of an event occurring. A recent report of a mugging might generate a perception that such incidents are commonplace," he says.
So, life is traumatic enough. Don't add to the toll.
"Research has shown that it is hard for many people to recover completely from trauma," Johnson says.
Thus, it would appear wise for many of us to avoid exposing ourselves to traumatic events, including those depicted in the media, that might increase our long-term vulnerability to trauma.
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