Mass shootings can raise fear and anxiety

Nov 07, 2009 (The Kansas City Star - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- SBUX | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- Sharon Bryant watched the Orlando shooting drama unfold Friday. She watched the Fort Hood horror on Thursday, too. It was hard to look away, especially after her own experience, which taught her how quickly life can grow ugly.

"It brings that day back again," she said. That day, April 29, 2007, when she stood in line at the Starbucks at Ward Parkway shopping center, waiting to pay for an ice tea.

Bullets from a shooter shattered the store window, showering a man with shards of glass. Bryant hit the floor. She and other customers scrambled to a back room, wedging milk crates against the door for protection against bullets.

"It's scary to think these things are escalating across the country," she said. But then she paused: "No offense, but the media may be helping us all think that because there are so many reports of innocent people being victimized."

Both Thursday and Friday, Twitter accounts on the breaking news updated every few seconds with thousands of one-sentence comments. Television and Internet sites reported breaking news. New angles were scrutinized and studied, and probably will be for weeks to come.

The crescendo of reports heightens our worrying, mental health experts said. And, yes, it does affect us.

But one horrific shooting doesn't spawn another, they said. What it does create is a backwash of fear, anxiety and hand-wringing. More stress-related disorders will appear.

"People haven't had enough time to process the first shooting, let alone the second," said Cherilyn DeSouza, chief of mental health at the Kansas City VA Medical Center.

"For our veterans who have already been diagnosed with (post-traumatic stress disorder), this tragedy with gunfire brings with it a high probability for an increase of their own symptoms. ... Even though someone might not be directly involved, it's still a shock to us all that somebody could do something like that."

After the Virginia Tech shootings in April 2007, the Pew Research Center conducted a survey gauging its effect on the public. A key question: Were the shootings reflective of broader problems within society or the isolated event of a troubled individual?

"What we learned was that women responded with the 'broader problems' answer and men said it was an individual," said Michael Dimock, assistant director at Pew.

The fear that violence is increasing in society could burden the average person over-stressed by the recession's financial woes, said author Laurence Miller, a clinical and forensic psychologist in Boca Raton, Fla.

Average people, he said, "aren't like mushrooms growing in the dark and then exploding" when the stress flips them over the edge.

"If that were the case, we'd all be dead. Most of us don't go berserk and kill."

People give off signals, he said.

"Most of the time when there's an incidence of a shooting, the news comes out that the person was a ticking time bomb and that somebody, somewhere noticed it. People are very consistent with their personalities over the long term."

To reach Lee Hill Kavanaugh, call 816-234-4420 or send e-mail to lkavanaugh@kcstar.com

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