1-What scares and unsettles people the most right now?
Actually, what scares us the most is death, which we constantly deny but is a fact of life. From our birth until our death, we deny this reality and get caught up in the rhythm of daily life. At this point, it can be said that we are living as if we would not die. That's why losing a loved one, disasters and terrorist incidents bring us face to face with the death we deny. When this reality, which we always try to suppress, suddenly appears before us with all its violence, it of course causes us fear and anxiety. We see that people are even more aware of death in terrorist incidents.
2-Does everyone perceive death in the same way?
No. The fact that each individual is unique causes changes in the perspective of this concept. For example, some individuals may view death as loneliness. For some people, death can mean liberation from the material world. While some people accept and welcome death, some may hate it and fear it. If we start from this point of view, what we feel and think about death also determines how we will feel when we face death.
3-How do children and adolescents face death?
The age of the individual Of course, it changes the perspective and feelings about death. We cannot expect a 50-year-old person and a 10-year-old child to think the same way. Research has shown that as children grow older, they develop a more mature approach to death. Children's perception of time is different from ours. They may perceive even a short-term separation as a total loss. Children between the ages of 3 and 5 may have little or no idea what death means. They may confuse death with sleep or believe that dead individuals will come back to life. In the event of the loss of someone close to them, they may blame themselves, thinking that they died because they did not listen to that person's words. Research shows that death is universal and reversible by the average age of 9 years. It was concluded that they did not perceive it as an impossible situation. Most children under the age of 7 do not believe in death, and even if they do, they may perceive it as a reversible situation.
When we look at adolescents, we see that they think death is a remote possibility. They may think that death is avoidable, ignoreable. Some adolescents may face the possibility of their own death by trying to understand the meaning of death. Adolescents' concepts of death are more abstract than children's. For example, we can see that adolescents define death with concepts such as light, darkness, nothingness. In connection with this, it is possible for them to be interested in religious and philosophical issues.
4-How should we talk to our child about death?
At this point, the best strategy is to be honest with them. Children may not understand some things, but if they sense or later realize that you are not being honest, it will erode their relationship with you. In addition, if you do not act honestly and the child gets information about the issue from a different source, this will cause conflict in the child. Therefore, families should not avoid talking about death with their children and should always be honest. The answers to questions a child asks about death vary depending on his or her age. For example, preschoolers need less detailed explanations than older children. In fact, what they really need is the desire to hear that they are loved and that they will not be abandoned. In addition, no matter how old the child is, families should be sensitive and understanding and encourage their children to express their own feelings and thoughts.
5-What stages do we go through when we face death?
The first stage a person goes through when facing death is denial. "this can't happen to me, this is impossible" he thinks. However, this is a temporary phase. Afterwards, denial gives way to anger. The person asks “why did this happen to me?” he asks. At this point, his relatives may have difficulty communicating with him because the person may project this anger onto them. After this stage, the person enters into compromise. At this point some individuals Internally, people often make an unconscious effort to reconcile with God. For example, people promise to live a life devoted to God or other people for a few months or a few weeks. This process gives way to depression over time. At this stage, the person begins to accept the certainty of death. The person may become quiet and withdrawn and want to keep other people away from themselves. He is in a dejected state most of the time, with constant crying, insomnia, or sleeping too much.
Finally, the person develops a sense of peace and accepts his/her fate. After this point, their emotional pain decreases and they begin to participate in life again.
6-What psychological disorders do a person experience after a traumatic experience such as terrorism?
After such events, we see that people's anxiety increases significantly and therefore their quality of life decreases. Due to their anxiety, they may avoid most situations, confining themselves to living in a narrower space. This situation can reduce the person's joy of living and cause him/her to question life. In order to diagnose these concerns as a disorder, a number of symptoms need to be investigated. Not every person who experiences anxiety is diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. We need to pay attention if the person is experiencing symptoms and his/her social, personal and professional adjustment is disrupted. These painful and painful days we have been through recently have, of course, seriously affected the lives of each of us. We are all anxious and afraid. This is not abnormal. Fear and anxiety are human emotions and often have an adaptive function. These days, we are all more or less worried about our lives and those of our relatives, we avoid going to crowded places, and we can look at people we don't know with suspicious eyes. These are normal reactions to a life-threatening event such as terrorism. However, if these and similar behaviors are now seriously harming the person's life, support may be needed at this point. For example, post-traumatic stress disorder, acute stress disorder and generalized anxiety disorder are disorders that need to be treated.
7-Can you explain what these disorders are?
Post-traumatic stress disorder occurs after a life-threatening event. It affects men and women equally. Research shows that it is seen between one and three percent of the population. In order for this diagnosis to be made, there must be a known source of stress. As examples of these; war, terrorism, being attacked, natural disasters. This disorder has three main features: first, constantly reliving the traumatic event in the mind, second, a constant state of hyperarousal, and finally, extreme avoidance behaviors. For example, if a person was at the place where a suicide bombing took place and saw the devastating consequences of this event, he can relive those moments in his mind over and over again, even days after the event. He doesn't do this willingly, in fact, when these thoughts fill his mind, he wants to deal with something else and get them out of his mind, but he can't. Or he constantly sees the incident as a nightmare in his dreams. The state of constant arousal is marked by the person's constant feeling of restlessness, sudden jumps, and sleep disturbances. When we say avoidance, it comes to the fore that the person takes unnecessary precautions. For example, a person who experienced a traumatic event on the metrobus may choose to endure a 4-hour traffic jam in order not to use the metrobus. Or he may make things up to both himself and others and not go where he needs to go by metrobus. In events where others die, it can be seen that these people develop a conscious or unconscious feeling of guilt for having survived. PTSD can develop months or even years after the event. Symptoms may fluctuate and there may be an increase in symptoms, especially after stress-triggering events. The symptoms of Acute Stress Disorder are similar to post-traumatic stress disorder, but the difference is that acute stress disorder lasts up to four weeks and occurs within four weeks after the traumatic event. In contrast, post-traumatic stress disorder can occur at any time after the event and can last a lifetime. Finally, generalized anxiety disorder p;somatic, that is, physical complaints, autonomic hyperactivity and overexcitability. Somatic complaints usually include headache, muscle aches (especially in the neck and back) and restlessness. In autonomic hyperactivity, there is shortness of breath, palpitations and sweating. This disorder lasts longer than six months and is marked by excessive delusions that impair the person's functionality. These patients often have a different psychiatric disorder, such as depression, in addition to anxiety.
8-How are these treated?
These disorders affect both the person and himself/herself. It seriously affects both the family and their relatives. Therefore, it must be treated. These disorders often respond most quickly and best to the combined application of both psychotherapy and pharmacology. It has also been observed that some people show improvement with psychotherapy alone. However, especially those who experience very high levels of symptoms may need to start medication treatment with a psychiatrist as well as a therapist. In psychotherapy, the person is generally confronted with their avoidance, their coping methods are developed, their awareness is increased, and their cognitively incorrect and incomplete schemas are reviewed. However, since each individual is unique, a treatment plan specific to the person's individual characteristics and problems experienced is developed. It is seen that these people generally focus on the negative, and even if they experience positive events, they focus their minds more on negative events. It is important to emphasize this point in the sessions and to make the client aware of this situation and to guide him/her to develop methods to cope with it.
9-What would you recommend to avoid being affected by these events?
Of course, it is impossible not to be affected by these events. However, we can take some precautions to protect our mental health. First of all, we should not trust every information we see or hear on the internet except from reliable sources. The information on the internet can be beneficial as well as harmful to us. That's why I didn't do a lot of research on terrorist incidents.
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