Daily Times

Terrorism can be dangerous, callous and cruel, but in general the evidence is that society adapts. Even in very violent conflicts where terrorist attacks are happening sometimes on an almost hourly basis, society does not collapse under the psychological strain. Most people adapt and cope, displaying remarkable resilience. Indeed, terrorism is a hostile activity that is mainly focused on civilians, with the purpose of advancing a specific agenda, political or other. Sadly, terrorist attacks, more than wars, are now claiming visibility in the news headlines in most regions of the world.

Social psychologists have long believed that a strong sense of community in a population is associated with a wide range of therapeutic advantages including better physical and psychological health. In fostering a cohesive sense of community, terrorism can actually end up working to improve the ability of most people to cope and respond positively to it. Notwithstanding that individual victims can still be profoundly and negatively traumatised by their experience, the overall reality is that the psychological impact of terrorism on wider communities has often been surprisingly mild even in countries where terrorist attacks are very common.

Northern Ireland and Palestine represent two good examples. Both regions have experienced intense and long-running campaigns of terrorist violence. In the case of Northern Ireland, there were intense fears in the initial stages of the conflict that the violence would paralyse Northern Ireland psychologically. Terrorist attacks were seen on a daily basis and the expectation was that this would have a lasting detrimental impact. The psychological collapse of the Irish nation, however, never happened. Even at the peak of the troubles, the Irish as a nation displayed a remarkable resilience in the face of the violence. A review of hospital referrals and admissions for mental health problems, para-suicide and suicide rates, and psychoactive drug prescriptions found there was no significant increase in any of these measures, which could be linked with terrorist violence. According to the International Handbook of Traumatic Stress Syndromes (Cairns, Wilson; 1992), “Only a very small proportion of the population not directly involved in the civil violence in Northern Ireland has become psychiatric casualties as a result of the political violence.”

It would be incorrect to say that the Irish people generally showed complete immunity to the effects of frequent terrorist attacks. On the contrary, it was very clear that while the Irish on a whole seemed to have escaped relatively unscathed from the violence, small groups did show signs of suffering. Proximity to terrorist violence was an important factor. The closer one was to an attack, the more of an impact it had on average. Suffering physical injuries as a result of an attack was strongly associated with increased psychological trauma, the more serious the injuries, the more serious the trauma. Survivors of terrorist attacks show high levels of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

One question that remains to be discussed is why was the constant threat of terrorism not more psychologically damaging in Northern Ireland? A number of reasons have been given to explain the low impact of the violence on the wider population apart from standard human resilience. The first answer is that the threat of terrorism made communities more cohesive. In the face of a shared threat, individuals identified more strongly with the community around them. In the wake of terrorist attacks — and with the threat of further attacks to come — the Northern Irish communities bonded closer together, providing increased support to each other. The result was that the psychological ill effects felt by the direct victims of terrorism could be “buffered by a state of rebound psychological well-being in the rest of the community”, according to the British Journal of Psychiatry (Curran; 1998). This effect was very obvious in suicide rates in Northern Ireland. Trends in suicide rates and terrorist-related deaths in Northern Ireland from 1966 to 1999 show a direct relationship between the two; when terrorism increased, suicides fell and vice versa. This was not the first time such effects had been seen. After serious riots in America, research found that significant proportions of the local populations actually reported a long-term improvement in their mental wellbeing.

Terrorist violence — and the threat of repeated violence — can act to bind communities with a sense of common purpose and common outrage. Not only do terrorist attacks promote a perception that there is a shared threat out there, such attacks also bolster an individual’s ties to their local community, deepening their sense of belonging and their identification with others living in the same geography. This is a powerful and strong social effect, which has been examined many times before. For example, during the London Blitz in World War II, many people noted the widespread camaraderie and closeness of what became known as the Blitz Spirit. Some aspects of this effect have also been seen in the Pak-Afghan border area after 9/11. While many editorials talked about the sense of fear and panic sweeping the country, it was equally clear that there was a massive and widespread sense of shared community. Posters of national flags and religious slogans were seen on cars and shops like an epidemic and millions of people expressed themselves in a very public display of shared identity.

Similar trends have been seen in Palestine, where relentless terrorist attacks, rather than shattering society psychologically, have instead witnessed a remarkable resilience effect.

Another way in which people adapt to terrorist threats is through what psychologists refer to as ‘mortality salience’, which is the effect of overexposure to death-related thoughts or imagery, including even very subtle cues relating to death or cues not consciously recognised by the person involved. The images of death, dying and killing, which are inherent in most media coverage of terrorism, are usually sufficient to produce a mortality salience effect.

Mortality salience can produce stronger identification with and pride in one’s country, religion, gender, race, etc. Critically, mortality salience can lead to an increase in support for extremism when it is linked to group identity. For example, under mortality salience conditions, some Muslim clerks expressed more sympathy and support for militants who expressed radicalised views. Also, individuals experience exaggerated tendencies to stereotype and reject those who are different from them. However, research shows that mortality salience produces especially harsh reactions to those who are seen to be breaking the rules. One explanation, therefore, to understand the cohesion in chaos consequence is to return to the mortality salience effect: when we are reminded of danger we tend to show increased support to our own group and to leaders of that group.

It is important to explore the emotions of despair, fear, and anger in people that arise after terrorist attacks and analyse reactions to the attacks. Terror Management Theory, an existential psychological model, is another theoretical concept that explains why humans react the way they do to the threat of death and how this reaction influences their post-threat cognition and emotion. The theory provides ways to understand and reduce terrorism’s effect and possibly find resolutions to conflicts involving terrorism. This model is applicable to all instances of terrorism, and it can be expanded to include the strategic conflict on our northwest frontier borders. This model has practical implications and will be a resource for mental health practitioners, policy makers, intelligence agencies, researchers, and anyone concerned with the causes and effects of terrorism.

The writer is a member of the Diplomate American Board of Medical Psychotherapists Dip.Soc Studies, Member Int’l Association of Forensic Criminologists, Associate Professor Psychiatry and Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist at the Huntercombe Group United Kingdom. He can be reached at fawad_shifa@yahoo.com