How Do Journalists Recognize Emotional Trauma?

The terms “trauma”, “triggers”, and “PTSD” have increasingly become hot button topics in today’s society as individuals become more aware of their mental health status and how it impacts their daily life. 

“Trauma or PTSD are not words to be thrown around. They are diagnosable, medical conditions,” Kenna Griffin, CMA President, professor, and leader for Thursday’s second trauma journalism said in her session entitled “Recognizing Emotional Trauma.”

What is trauma? According to the American Psychological Association, trauma is an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, rape, or natural disaster. Usually there are long- and short-term reactions.

Trauma symptoms result in unwanted memories, dreams, flashbacks or re-experiencing of trauma, physical reaction to reminders of said incident, avoidance of the location of the incident, depression symptoms, self-blame or guilt regarding the incident, and a constant sense of hypervigilance. 

“There can be a lot of self-guilt involved in various situations, especially when people are trapped in vehicles or under rubble, etc. and you’re just standing there with a notepad in your hands,” Griffin said. 

There are three levels of emotional trauma: adjustment disorder (a psychological stressor response), acute stress disorder (symptoms lasting more than a week, not yet a month in length), and post-traumatic stress disorder (severe symptoms lasting for at least a month). 

Resilience is key to overcome personal trauma experience and resilience is best acquired by training, hence the importance of training with regard to the journalism profession. 

“Social support is critical,” Griffin said. “How do you help each other in the newsroom? Being a journalist becomes such a part of your personal identity, it can be hard to compartmentalize things that take place that really affect you.”

Griffin advised students to provide emotional, informational, social, and instrumental support as each of these factors plays to a specific psychological as well as practical support network that should be built naturally into every newsroom. 

According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the National Center for PTSD, journalists surveyed said that they believed that if they claim that their reporting experiences were significantly affecting them they would be seen as weak and less capable by the public and their fellow colleagues who were less affected by similar or the same traumatic reporting scenario.