HEALTH PLUS:RTÉ's 'Disasters' series highlights how we react in different ways to various tragic events, writes Marie Murray
THE TELEVISION series Disasterson RTÉ 1 on Tuesday nights alerts us to what is encountered psychologically by those who are involved in sudden, unexpected, life-altering "disasters", whether they be natural or man-made disasters in origin. Earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and fires: such disasters all evoke emotions for those involved, whether or not they are injured in the event. Man-made disasters: physical attacks, shootings, kidnappings, arson, hijacking, war-related atrocities, bombings, all these essentially avoidable catastrophes naturally generate different feelings than tragedies that do not involve human assault.
It matters to us whether tragedy has befallen us through the sheer bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or whether we have been injured because of another person's intent, even if the intention to harm us is not personal.
We can forgive nature more readily than we can forgive each other. Nature is not personally malign, although its strength may overwhelm us. Man-made disasters - despite so-called "causes" or elaborate rationalisations and obfuscating rhetoric - involve injury by people to other people.
That is what makes them qualitatively different from other tragic events. It hurts if someone hurts you when they need not have done so.
There is a further emotional differentiation that we make. We distinguish between man-made disasters that are planned or accidental. Disasters that are planned before perpetration are different from those that are due to human ineptitude or error. For example, error that is entirely inadvertent is more acceptable than error due to negligence, due to substance influence or because of reckless disregard for care.
The distinctions between our emotional responses when disasters occur may be drawn unconsciously, but they are finely tuned. Additionally, those who witness disasters often experience a different set of emotions from those actively involved and the helplessness felt by bystanders can be intense and traumatic.
Furthermore, at what appears initially to be a greater emotional distance are those people who see the disaster on television, whose encounter is a vicarious and somewhat voyeuristic one provided by media portrayal of the situation.
Disasters are by no means generic. Nor are our responses to them. Their impact on each of us depends upon our previous life-experiences, our personal ideologies, our emotional robustness, the levels of support we have from other people, and the degree of explanation given and extent of culpability admitted by those involved when disaster strikes.
Psychological literature outlines disaster typologies and at least five dimensions upon which they may be rated. These include the type of disaster, its duration, the degree of personal impact experienced, the potential for recurrence and the extent to which people feel that they can prevent a disaster from happening again.
Anyone involved in a disaster at whatever distance, however peripherally, however vicariously, even when no personal harm to self or significant others has occurred, still has an emotional response to knowing that other people have suffered.
Even at a distance, even with the remoteness of simply receiving media portrayal of tragedy from the other side of the globe, there is a level of self-condemnation and of survivor guilt for those who realise that they have been spared. They realise that they are not the victims of war.
They are not hungry because of famine. They are not in pain because of torture, nor are they suffering the degradation of humiliation or even the onslaught of nature at its most relentless and intense in another part of the world.
We watch programmes about disasters because they engage us in several important psychological processes. They inform and educate. They mesmerise. They depict. They make us aware of the fragility of life, about which we need reminders if we are to renew our desire to savour the present. They provide us with models of what to do in a crisis should misfortune befall us.
They ensure that we set in place whatever is required in our own situations to avert human or natural disaster from taking undue toll. They infiltrate our consciousness and let us know we have been lucky.
What we do with the insights we receive when we learn about disasters is up to us, but disasters do put it up to us to do something.
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Clinical psychologist and author Marie Murray is the director of the student counselling services in University College Dublin