Tag: psychology
Why Are Americans So Afraid?

Why Are Americans So Afraid?

Reprinted with permission fromAlterNet.

In December 2016, at a rally in North Carolina, a 12-year-old girl looked at then candidate Donald Trump, “I’m scared,” she said. “What are you going to do to protect this country?”

“You know what, darling?” Trump replied. “You’re not going to be scared anymore. They’re going to be scared.”

Throughout his campaign, Donald Trump played off the rising fear of the American public. His “us vs. them” rhetoric eroded people’s trust in facts, numbers, nuance, government and the news media and augmented the already fragile line of truth. Despite all negatives one can say about Trump, this tactic was clearly successful. He was right to know Americans were afraid and that they would vote accordingly.

But there is a remarkable dissonance between what seems to be and what is. According to Harvard professor, Steven Pinker, “Violence has been in decline over long stretches of time and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species’ existence.”

In most of the world, the rate of homicide has been sinking. The Great American Crime Decline of the 1990s proceeded right through the recession of 2008 and up to the present. Among 88 countries with reliable data, 67 have seen a decline in homicide in the past 15 years.

“You often hear people saying, on both sides of the political divide, that the world is a mess,” said Joseph Cirincione, President of the Ploughshares Fund, a public grant-making foundation focused on nuclear weapons policy and conflict resolution. “The world is not a mess. It’s just messy.” The collapse of the existing order in the Middle East, Cirincione said, is one manifestation of the world’s messiness. “But the world itself is doing pretty darn good. We do not have major powers in conflict. We have small wars. We do not have major wars.”

Yet, A poll, by Gallup, found that concern about crime and violence is at its highest level in 15 years. According to the Chapman University Survey on American Fears some 70 percent of our citizenry is afraid of threats of terrorism, economic collapse, cyber warfare and government corruption.

So how is it that we are living in what is arguably the safest time in history, yet we, as a country, exist in a culture of fear?

Christopher Fettweis, author of The Pathologies of Power: Fear, Honor, Glory, and Hubris in U.S. Foreign Policy, says it is because “our fear is not based on an intellectual conclusion, it’s a belief.” America’s fear has become a framework of belief, surpassing far beyond the plasticity of opinions. And as history has proved time and time again, beliefs are near impossible to change.

The reality is “facts” don’t mean much in the way of beliefs. Telling a person, who has the sincerest gut belief, the statistic that more Americans are killed each year by furniture than terrorism becomes somehow unconvincing, or rather disagreeable. Political psychologists call this tendency of people to conform assessments of information to some goal or end extrinsic to accuracy “motivated reasoning.” In other words, people believe what they want to believe. This cognitive process infiltrates everything from us convincing ourselves a gluten-free cupcake is healthy to our groundless denial of climate change and gun violence.

So why is this process so crucial in understanding the culture of fear in America?

It perpetuates it. Because humans will dismiss rational thinking for the sake of reconfirming their identity, their fears will eclipse facts. A person, self-identified as a conservative, turns on the news to see a terrorist attack in London. They go on Twitter to see fellow conservatives’ rants on building a wall, on protecting our borders. Their fear is legitimized within their cushy network of familiarity. But if this person encountered the statistic, “zero refugees from countries included in the president’s travel ban have killed anyone in terrorist attacks on American soil.” Well, that does not fit with their worldview. The individual does not conform to adjust his perspective but emerges unconvinced and indignantly dogged. According to psychologist Tom Gilovich, this is because the fundamental questions we ask ourselves in response to particular information conforms to what we want to believe. “For desired conclusions,” he writes, “it is as if we ask ourselves ‘Can I believe this?,’ but for disagreeable conclusions we ask, ‘Must I believe this?’” People do not confront new information looking for truth, but rather looking for their truth and this means facts take a backseat to deeply ingrained fears.

These fears are sustained through media coverage. Every time we switch on the news, a building is in flames, a new virus has swept a new nation, or a man with a gun has wreaked havoc on an elementary school. It seems a string is holding the world together. The overwhelming coverage of terrorist attacks, shootings, and other violent episodes are so entwined in our daily lives that their imminence is inflated. “Your day to day experience is that terrible things are happening and they could happen to you tomorrow,” says Cirincione. For those that have not made it beyond the US border, their perceptions of the outside world are shaped solely by this media diet. And what makes news coverage overseas? It is people having bad things happen, doing bad things to each other; it is violence and degradation.

To the individual, this news coverage is a consistent reminder of our own mortality. A study done by the American Psychological Association presents the phenomenon as follows: when confronted with thoughts of our own mortality people appear to behave more conservatively by shunning and even punishing outsiders and those who threaten the status of their cherished world views. Understanding this helps to understand how America’s current culture of fear has become synonymous with the fear of terrorism. Despite the fact that the chances of being a victim of terrorism are roughly the same as that of being hit by lightning, a majority of Americans now worry that they or their families will be victims of terrorism, up from a third less than two years ago, according to a survey by the Public Religion Research Institute.

Terrorist attacks carry the powerful quality of uncertainty. They can happen anywhere and you, as an American, will never understand the people behind them. Since 1973, psychologists have argued that political conservatism as an ideological belief system is significantly related to concerns having to do with the psychological management of uncertainty. According to a study done by NYU, we respond to uncertainty as we would respond to a threat– with fear. As death reminders become more prevalent, society becomes more antagonistic toward those with different beliefs and values; they become more fearful of the other. The common rhetoric turns to that of us vs. them. We feel we have to build a literal wall to separate ourselves from the big, bad existential other. In this world of inflamed rhetoric, Muslims become terrorists, factual probability becomes irrelevant and doing nothing becomes weakness.

This mentality has cost the US roughly 100’s of billions of dollars annually on counter-terrorism, efforts yet terrorism is rising. In 2015, terrorist attacks occurred in almost 100 countries—up from 59 in 2013—according to the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database. In America, the numbers are different. 24 people have died in America from terrorist attacks since 9/11– in other words, less than two per year. That is not to say that these lives are not important, they are, but so are the nearly 45,000 annual deaths associated with lack of health insurance. And the 37,000annual deaths from road crashes each year. And the over 59,000 of those who die annually due to the opioid epidemic. And the 99,000 who died from preventable healthcare-associated infections. And the list goes on.

Given these statistics, how the government chooses to allocate our resources comes as a shock. To combat the most likely cause of death, heart disease, the government contributes only $2 billion. And just $300 million is devoted to research on the third most likely cause of death, strokes. The US congress funded cancer research through the NCI with just $5.389 billion in 2017. Yet, as Americans we allow this to continue largely because we’re too lazy to crosscheck the facts and confront the issue logically. As long as terrorism pervades the media, the government will continue to put money where the fear is, whether logical or not at all.

Telling people do not fear terror in this hyperactive age is like trying to convince a person standing in the rain that it is a sunny day. Their experience, their worldview, their very sense of self says otherwise. This is not to say that Americans do not have the right to be afraid. Being afraid is an instinctive response, but our heightened response should be redirected to lethal fears, the ones that might actually kill us.

Header image by Wikimedia Commons.

Trump Trauma Is Real. Here’s How To Fight Back

Trump Trauma Is Real. Here’s How To Fight Back

Reprinted with permission fromAlterNet.

The day after the 2016 presidential election, therapists around the country reported a surge in clients emotionally devastated by the shock and disgust of Donald Trump’s win. Several psychologists recounted meeting with patients who compared the jarring effect of the election to the psychological blow of 9/11.

Tracey Rubenstein, a Florida-based social worker, told JTA that in the months following Trump’s victory, “80 percent of her clients would cite the election and its aftermath as a new source of fear, sadness or anxiety in their lives.” Psychotherapist Enrico Gnaulati wrote that he was “inundated with clients using therapy time to process their shock, disbelief, dismay, and outrage.” This June, the New York Times spoke with psychologist Robert Duff, who said the political climate is “a topic of conversation and a source of anxiety in nearly every clinical case that I have worked with since the presidential election.” Four decades of practice didn’t prepare psychologist Sam Menahem for the outpouring of grief he saw following Trump’s triumph, which affected patients more extremely than any other election he recalled. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” Menahem told JTA, “never.”

In an attempt to succinctly describe the constellation of signs and symptoms patients have presented with, therapists have created an collection of unofficial diagnoses, including Trump traumatic stress disorder, Trump anxiety disorder, post-Trump election trauma, Trump trauma and post-Trump stress disorder (PTSD). This isn’t about self-pitying sore losers, but genuine physical and mental manifestations of fear and anxiety confirmed by clinicians. Symptoms vary from person to person, but can include insomnia, panic attacks, irritability, malaise, anti-social feelings and depression. The Trump 15 refers to weight gain resulting from excessive “eating and drinking undertaken to blunt the pain” of the election, and relatedly, some have reported numbing themselves with drugs and alcohol. Suicide hotlines, among them those that serve LGBTQ populations, reported a steep rise in calls far exceeding those in other elections.

“I have people who’ve told me they’re in mourning, that they’ve lost their libido,” Nancy Molitor, a Chicago psychologist, told Kaiser Health News. “I have people saying the anxiety is causing them to be so distracted that they’re blowing through stop signs or getting into fender benders.”’

Trump’s ugly rhetoric about racial and religious minorities compounded with the daily emotional consequences of marginalization and institutional racism has led to “race-based trauma,” a form of PTSD suffered by people of color, most acutely African Americans. The enduring national trauma of 9/11 and 15 years of war is exacerbated in black and brown communities by the collective trauma of local police violence, distressing images of black death on a viral loop and cops who literally get away with murder—a constant reminder of America’s devaluation of black life. The specter of the 2008 financial collapse hovers over all Americans, but black and Hispanic communities were hardest hit and still haven’t recovered. Unemployment among blue-collar workers of color is the highest in this country, pushing working nonwhites even closer to the edge of the economic cliff.

Trump also exploited trauma among his base. Though his mostly middle– and upper-middle-class supporters were more economically secure than other voters, they perceived themselves as underdogs after years of watching the issues that plague their communities go unaddressed. At a moment when they were desperately trying to make sense of why the American dream seems frustratingly out of reach, candidate Trump offered a bevy of scapegoats—immigrants, blacks, Muslims, ambitious women—as an answer. In towns where jobs have dried up, hopelessness and pessimism are tied to fatalistic behaviors such as alcoholism, opioid abuse and increased rates of suicide. A Nation post-election analysis found that Trump won big “in counties heavily burdened by opioid overdoses and other ‘deaths of despair.’” Trump “saw” the frustrations of people who feel increasingly invisible, “heard” their anger, and above all, exploited their pain and rage.

Trump’s tenure in the executive office has continued to worry millions of observers. The president behaves erratically and unpredictably, and the only reliable pattern in this White House has been scandal and chaos. The resulting breakneck speed of the news cycle has yielded Trump fatigue syndrome, which Vox describes as the “exhaustion you feel from trying to stay on top of the nonstop scandals and absurdities emanating from the Trump administration.” The president denies having uttered things that are easily discoverable with a Google search, taking gaslighting—a form of mental abuse that makes people doubt their reality—to levels previously unseen in an American political leader. At hours when most of us are sleeping, the president is awake and rage-tweeting insults at the media and any other imagined enemies.

“In addition to the normal chaos of being a human being, there is what almost feels like weaponized uncertainty thrown at us on a daily basis,” Kat Kinsman, the author of Hi, Anxiety told the New York Times. “It’s coming so quickly and messily, some of it straight from the president’s own fingers.”

Many are now trying to comprehend a U.S. that defies their understanding of what their country should be. Politicians have always lied or manipulated the truth, but Trump has taken even the worst kind of politics-as-usual to a new level. The inability to bridge that mental gap results in moral injury, which psychologist Noel Hunter describes as the “emotional distress” and “damage done to a person’s sense of justice in the world resulting from violations of fairness, the value of life, and ethics.” Essentially, moral injury occurs when we witness violations of the social contract as we understand it.

“It’s the first time that I’ve really questioned the values of Americans as a group,” one 25-year-old therapy patient told JTA. “I’ve never felt that the core fundamental values which I believe our country is built on were in jeopardy the way I did after this election.”

Another said that the election had “shattered my faith in the essential goodness of the world.”

“In psychotherapy you often discuss scary dreams, but with the implicit understanding that they’re just dreams,” Gary Shteyngart, an author and therapy patient, added. “What happens when the nightmares come true? It’s a whole different fifty minutes.”

Black Americans and other visible minorities have long had to deal with the longstanding gaslighting of a country that professes to lead the world in human rights, freedom and liberty, while denying those virtues to so many of its nonwhite citizens. For many minorities, the election confirmed their worst fears about America. As Jesse Washington notes at the Undefeated, “One sentiment rang loudest in many African-American hearts and minds: The election shows where we really stand. Now the truth is plain to see, many said—the truth about how an uncomfortable percentage of white people view the concerns and lives of their black fellow citizens.”

That did not make the Trump pill any easier to swallow. In fact, minorities reported higher levels of post-election stress than their white counterparts. The precipitous rise in hate crimes after the election, and the president’s silence about them, has only further contributed to an increasingly inhospitable environment for people of color. A Harvard study released in early June found that “minorities (69% of blacks, 57% of Asians, 56% of Hispanics) [are] more likely than non-Hispanic whites (42%) to report that the outcome of the 2016 presidential election was a significant source of stress.” Recent studies find Trump’s deportation escalation has caused many undocumented immigrants to avoid all contact with the police, even when their own safety is at risk. Another survey of groups dedicated to issues around domestic violence found significant percentages of immigrant abuse survivors are now afraid to contact police, or have dropped court cases against their abusers, due to fears of deportation.

Trauma is one reaction to Trump’s politics of fear, violence and confusion, but it’s not the only one. The response to Trump’s presidency won’t be universal, even among those who largely oppose his agenda. Not everyone is traumatized, though it’s critical to recognize and validate the experience of those who are. Denying the existence of trauma can be as damaging as the original traumatizing issue itself. Though trauma can trigger a sense of loneliness, it’s helpful to remember that millions of people are experiencing the similar feelings.

There’s no single way to deal with Trump trauma, but there are many different options that may work for different people. Talking to a therapist or counselor, and medications that treat anxiety and depression, can be extremely helpful, though the prohibitive cost of mental health care makes those choices inaccessible for some folks. Social media can be great for connecting to others, but it can also be the source of anxiety, so it’s good to occasionally unplug and log off. Exercise, good nutrition and spending time with pets or in nature can be big de-stressors. Nearly every single therapist recommends engaging in activities that offer a sense of control in a moment of chaos and counter feelings of hopelessness with feelings of agency. That can mean becoming politically active, creating art and connecting with likeminded people. Psychologist Jeremy Clyman, writing at Psychology Today, recommends “joining peaceful groups and organizations, dispassionate debates with others, and assertions of personal political power (e.g. vote, and blow up your congressman’s cell phone and email, etc.).” Do what works for you.

There’s no way to sugarcoat it: the Trump years won’t be easy, and this presidency has helped stoke some of the ugliest aspects of this country. But there are voices of sanity and vision who can help in this moment. Just remember they’re out there.

Kali Holloway is a senior writer and the associate editor of media and culture at AlterNet.

On The Front Lines Of PTSD Research

On The Front Lines Of PTSD Research

By Bill Glauber, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (TNS)

MILWAUKEE — Picture a trauma victim, someone who has endured a gunshot wound, a car crash or an industrial accident, a person whose body is broken and is rushed into surgery to be mended by physicians racing against the clock.

But what happens during recovery, when thoughts ricochet through the mind of the victim? What happens if symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder take hold?

This is where clinical psychologist Terri deRoon-Cassini steps in.

Working alongside surgeons at Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin, deRoon-Cassini is deeply engaged in research that identifies neurological, biological, and psychosocial markers for PTSD. She also provides psychological care to injured trauma patients.

It’s not just soldiers in combat who can suffer from PTSD. Civilians who encounter trauma in their daily lives also can get PTSD, which can lead to severe mental health problems.

DeRoon-Cassini said PTSD is the biggest predictor of quality of life in trauma patients. A 2010 study conducted at Froedtert showed that up to 40 percent of civilian survivors developed PTSD.

“Why is PTSD important? It’s important because if people can no longer engage in their everyday lives, they can’t support themselves, be there for family and loved ones,” she said.

Ultimately, she said, untreated PTSD “creates a large health burden on society.”

Froedtert is among only a few hospitals in the country that routinely screens trauma patients for PTSD symptoms. It also is unique for having a clinical psychologist like deRoon-Cassini working in the surgical department.

The American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma recommends PTSD and depression screening at Level I trauma centers like Froedtert. According to deRoon-Cassini, the hope is that in five years such screening treatment will be mandated and more psychologists will be embedded in trauma centers.

The hospital also has started a trauma mentoring program. Four former patients who have been through the system, and then received training, volunteer their time to talk with new patients about recovering from a traumatic event.

“Our psychological intervention is targeted to people at risk,” deRoon-Cassini said. “PTSD can’t be diagnosed until 30 days after a trauma. We want to prevent that diagnosis.”

Stephen Hargarten, chief of the Emergency Department at Froedtert Hospital, said deRoon-Cassini plays a vital role.

“She’s an expert at understanding how a traumatic event affects an individual and she is an expert at recognizing and intervening before debilitating post-traumatic stress takes over,” Hargarten said.

“People generally associate PTSD with military engagement but they don’t often associate this with day-to-day events that are similar in quality, a kinetic energy exchange from a car crash or a bullet,” Hargarten said.

At 36, deRoon-Cassini is deep into a career centered on detecting and treating PTSD.

Born and raised in California, she attended the University of Wyoming, where she studied zoology and physiology. While in college, she got an internship at a domestic violence shelter.

She recalled helping one client, a woman who suffered abuse at the hands of her husband, a member of the military. The woman, a mother of four, had cuts on her face. She needed dental care because several teeth had been knocked out. But before she could get her teeth fixed, she had to undergo a magnetic resonance imaging test to see if there were any fractures.

The clicking sound of the MRI triggered a flashback for the woman. DeRoon-Cassini later learned why. The woman told her that one weekend she had been kept in a box in the basement of her home, and anytime she made a noise her husband hit the box with a baseball bat.

DeRoon-Cassini said that woman’s story pushed her toward her life’s work.

She earned her master’s and doctorate degrees in clinical psychology at Marquette University. During an internship at the Zablocki Veterans Affairs Medical Center, she focused on health psychology and PTSD after combat trauma.

DeRoon-Cassini completed postdoctoral work at the Medical College of Wisconsin, where she is now assistant professor in the Department of Surgery, Division of Trauma & Critical Care.

She and her colleagues are involved in several studies that she hopes “can give us a more complete picture of risk for PTSD.”

“Can we look at the biology of a person at risk? Can we look at their neurological state?” she said.

Just as important, she is in the trenches, trying to help patients cope with trauma. Others are, too.

The Trauma Peer Mentor Program was unveiled at Froedtert in October. Former patients talk with current patients, imparting advice and listening. The initiative grew out of the Trauma Survivors Network, which works to connect patients and families after serious injury.

“We visit patients who are newly injured,” said Chris Prange-Morgan, who fell 30 feet at a local climbing gym in 2011. Three years later, her right leg was amputated just below the knee.

“One of the things I’ve found in connecting with people is there is a great network of very old souls out there who know what it’s like to suffer,” she said.

Prange-Morgan did not suffer PTSD after her injury, but said she knows what to look for in patients who might be in distress.

“I think it can help people to know there is hope, particularly when faced with not just a physical injury but the emotional scarring of knowing they have been violated in their home or a victim of a serious car accident outside their control,” she said. “Having someone come and help you feel you can get control back is pretty important.”

(c)2015 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

Photo: Joe Shlabotnik via Flickr

Much Ado About Shakespeare: Study Finds Disputed Play Bears The Master’s Mark

Much Ado About Shakespeare: Study Finds Disputed Play Bears The Master’s Mark

By Melissa Healy, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

Chalk up another one for The Bard.

Double Falsehood, a play said to have been written by William Shakespeare but whose authorship has been disputed for close to three centuries, is almost certainly the work of the 16th-century poet and playwright, new research finds.

Shakespeare appears to have had some assistance in the project from John Fletcher, a contemporary who is thought to have co-written three plays with the Bard — including one on a theme similar to that of Double Falsehood — near the end of Shakespeare’s life.

Nevertheless, “the entire play was consistently linked to Shakespeare with a high probability,” the authors of the new study wrote.

Those findings came after two researchers subjected the play’s language to psychological scrutiny and computer analysis so exhaustive that not a single pun, put-down, preposition, or “prithee” went uncounted. The researchers’ method supercharges the practice of “styleometry” long used by scholars of literature by recruiting computers to churn through millions of sentences of text.

Aided by machine-learning programs, computers quickly discern linguistic regularities that become an author’s “signature.” When the authorship of a book or play is contested, computer-enhanced stylometry can compare suspected authors’ “signatures” to that of the disputed work, yielding a scientific basis for assigning authorship.

In the end, two psychology professors from the University of Texas in Austin declared that the author of Double Falsehood — a tale of fathers, sons, duty, and love set in Andalusia — was Shakespeare, and not his acolyte Lewis Theobold.

Theobold, a Shakespeare scholar and avid collector of manuscripts, published the play in 1728, claiming it came from three original manuscripts written by the Bard. Those manuscripts, however, were said to have burned in a library fire. In the absence of physical proof, scholars’ suspicions fell upon Theobold as a literary imposter.

Under the supervision of University of Texas psychology professors Ryan L. Boyd and James W. Pennebaker, machines churned through 54 plays — 33 by Shakespeare, nine by Fletcher and 12 by Theobold — and tirelessly computed each play’s average sentence-length, quantified the complexity and psychological valence of its language, and sussed out the frequent use of unusual words.

“Our results offer consistent evidence against the notion that Double Falsehood is Theobold’s whole-cloth forgery,” wrote Boyd and Pennebaker. While Theobold’s “psychological signature” was not evident, it did make “passing statistical appearances” — probably the result of Theobold’s penchant for heavy editing, they added.

The notion — and method — of creating a writer’s psychological signature opens up new avenues to authenticating disputed works, wrote Boyd and Pennebaker. But they underscored that it can also be used to provide a “better understanding of individuals’ composite mental lives.”

The researchers cite longstanding research that shows that the way writers use language, the words they choose, and even the length of their sentences bespeaks their cognitive style and temperament. A deep analysis of a writer’s verbal output can “paint a very rich picture of who that person is, how he or she thinks, and what he or she thinks about,” they write.

For Shakespeare, much of whose life remains a mystery, the analysis offers a bit of insight: his frequent use of prepositions suggests he was rigorously educated in grammar. His heavy use of “social content words” (vs. words related to thought processes or emotion) suggests he was more attuned to social niceties and advancement than he was either cerebral or preoccupied by his own or others’ feelings, the authors write.

(c)2015 Los Angeles Times, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC