The past several years have ushered in a cascade of compounding collective trauma,1 including the COVID-19 pandemic, a rise in mass shootings across the United States, a war in Ukraine, and, most recently, catastrophic wildfires in Canada, whose smoke has threatened public health across North America. Decades of research has robustly demonstrated that media exposure to collective trauma can portend deleterious mental health outcomes for both adults and children; such negative psychological outcomes include elevated posttraumatic stress symptoms, acute stress symptoms, depression, anxiety and other mental health ailments.2 Such responses may have long-term implications for physical health: after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, more ongoing fear/worry about terrorism was associated with increased cardiovascular ailments three years following the attacks.3 Importantly, as the populace is exposed to more media exposure about more traumatic events over time, the negative effects of this exposure may accumulate, with a potential dose-response relationship between exposure and negative responses.4
In addition to the amount of media exposure, the content of that exposure also matters for mental health. For example, following the 2014 Boston Marathon bombing, those who reported more exposure to graphic images reported more psychological distress over time, even after adjusting for total hours of exposure.5 In turn, that distress had measurable associations with functional impairment. During early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, greater exposure to conflicting information regarding the outbreak was associated with increased distress.6
Yet concurrently, during times of crisis, the media is the mechanism that people turn to for critical information and updates. This is particularly important when collective traumas are experienced through direct (e.g., physical proximity), indirect (e.g., knowing someone exposed), and media-based exposure. A critical tension emerges. There is the potential for multiple exposures to occur, negatively impacting mental health. But people must stay informed about the crisis to learn how to protect themselves and others from the threat in order to reduce the severity of event-related trauma. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, individuals were exposed to distressing news coverage while they were grappling with severe disruption to daily life, individual sickness, and even death of a loved one. Yet they needed to stay informed regarding vacillating mitigation strategies and local epidemiological data regarding outbreak severity and prevalence. During the recent Canadian wildfires, psychological distress from direct exposure to harmful smoke may have been compounded by media exposure. Yet it was critical for individuals to know how dangerous the air quality was and how to best adapt to protect their health and the health of their loved ones.
Recent research has sought to explore how the media can be used as a conduit for necessary information without creating additional psychological distress. In a longitudinal study of a representative sample of Gulf Coast residents assessed for responses to catastrophic hurricanes as well as COVID-19, exposure to traditional media (e.g., television and online news) was associated with increased protective behavior in response to both COVID-19 and hurricanes.7 However, increased exposure to social media (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, YouTube) was associated with decreased efficacy regarding health protective behavior in response to COVID-19; social media exposure to hurricanes was associated with neither an increase nor a decrease. This suggests that where individuals obtain their information regarding a collective trauma may impact their psychological and behavioral response to it.
Taken together, research demonstrates the need for accurate, clear, and non-graphic information during collective trauma. Clinicians should be aware offor the potential for media exposure to influence psychological distress, potentially exacerbating existing mental health ailments. Suggestions include limiting the amount of time spent consuming news, particularly information obtained from social media. With respect to policy and scholarship, it is imperative to discover ways to communicate information regarding collective trauma in a non-sensationalized, informative manner. Future research should continue to explore how to best navigate the tension between spreading distress and informing the populace, in order to provide critical, empirically grounded recommendations for media and mental health professionals.
About the author
Dana Rose Garfin, PhD, is an assistant professor of Community Health Sciences in the Fielding School of Public Health at UCLA. Her program of research explores 1) how negative life events and collective traumas (including natural disasters, climate-related hazards, epidemics/pandemics, and terrorist attacks) impact individuals and communities across the lifespan; 2) how community-based interventions can help alleviate the harmful effects of trauma exposure, particularly in populations with high health disparities; and 3) how psychological responses (including affective responses and threat perceptions) guide protective behaviors in the face of community disasters. Dr. Garfin uses a biopsychosocial, multi-methodological approach to examining these issues, which includes longitudinal, epidemiological surveys; qualitative focus groups; biological indicators of the stress response; and community-based clinical trials. Her work is currently funded by National Science Foundation, National Institute of Health, and the Department of Defense.
References
1. Silver RC, Holman EA, Garfin DR. Coping with cascading collective traumas in the United States. Nat Hum Behav. 2021;5(1):4-6. doi:10.1038/s41562-020-00981-x
2. Garfin DR, Silver RC, Holman EA. The novel coronavirus (COVID-2019) outbreak: Amplification of public health consequences by media exposure. Heal Psychol. Published online 2020. doi:10.1037/hea0000875
3. Holman EA, Silver RC, Poulin M, Andersen J, Gil-Rivas V, McIntosh DN. Terrorism, acute stress, and cardiovascular health. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2008;65(1):73-80.
4. Garfin DR, Holman EA, Silver RC. Cumulative exposure to prior collective trauma and acute stress responses to the Boston Marathon bombings. Psychol Sci. 2015;26(6):675-683. doi:10.1177/0956797614561043
5. Holman EA, Garfin DR, Lubens P, Silver RC. Media exposure to collective trauma, mental health, and functioning: Does it matter what you see? Clin Psychol Sci. 2020;8(1):111-124. doi:10.1177/2167702619858300
6. Holman EA, Thompson RR, Garfin DR, Silver RC. The unfolding COVID-19 pandemic: A probability-based, nationally representative study of mental health in the U.S. Sci Adv. 2020;5390:eabd5390. doi:10.1126/sciadv.abd5390
7. Garfin DR, Thompson RR, Wong-Parodi G. Media exposure, threat processing, and mitigation behaviors in Gulf Coast residents facing the co-occurring threats of COVID-19 and hurricanes. Risk Anal. 2022:1-17. doi:10.1111/risa.14032