Re: ARTICLE: Fallout likely caused 15,000 deaths

[RuthWeiner@AOL.COM]

I'm not trying to minimize the problem (and you know I really resent the implication that because I ask a straightforward question, I have some kind of agenda. I DON'T!), but trying to figure out when it exists.  The definition (which I had already read) is (was) not enlightening.  All fear, and all fearful events, do not result in POST traumatic stress (syndrome or no syndrome).  I keep emphasizing "post" because it means "after" the fearful event.  Everyone experiences fear at some time or another, unless he or she leads a dreadfully sheltered, uneventful life, and most episodes of fear do not result in post traumatic stress. Even truly awful, continuing, frightening situations do not always have this result; have you read the works of Primo Levi, who was an Italian partisan and interned at Auschwitz?  You should -- they would re-introduce you to the real world.


I actually have a close friend who does suffer from post-traumatic stress, because the nature of his work (which he had to give up) was such that he encountered very frightening situations on a continuing basis for many years, and that makes sense to me.  But a single episode with no lasting consequence might be very frightening to an adult, but it seems to me would hardly result in after-the-fact, or "post traumatic" stress (though it might in a child).


The reiteration after radioactive accidents that "there were no deaths and no health damage but there were many victims of psychological stress" does not sound very credible in light of ordinary human experience.  I'm trying to figure out just how credible it is.


Ruth Weiner, Ph. D.

ruthweiner@aol.com