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Collective trauma of LA wildfires could create mental health problems for decades
Los Angeles Daily News ^ | January 20, 2025 | Andre Mouchard

Posted on 01/20/2025 11:56:40 AM PST by Angelino97

If you’re wondering what’s next for a region ravaged by wildfires, consider this possible future:

Much of Los Angeles County and surrounding areas is about to need therapy. If not immediately, then soon. And possibly for years.

Mental health woes – in the form of everything from anxiety and depression to unexplained rage and suicide – could plague the city long after the current disaster fades from the news. Post-disaster Los Angeles might even appear as if it’s stuck in the COVID era, with a small but noticeable slice of the population battling a persistent and sometimes deadly disease.

Those are informed predictions from people working in a relatively new, self-explanatory field of psychology known as collective trauma.

Experts in collective trauma describe the Palisades and Eaton fires as a combined “instigating event.” By that, they mean the fires, collectively, are a potential super spreader of mental suffering, not unlike other community-wide disasters such as the 9/11 terror attacks, Hurricane Katrina and the Las Vegas mass shooting.

Nobody can say exactly how many people will be affected, only that most people will not suffer to the point that they need help. “Collective” doesn’t mean everyone. But experts do say at least some fraction of Los Angeles County’s 9.7 million residents – meaning tens of thousands of people when you include some in neighboring counties – will experience mental health challenges powerful enough to require psychological or psychiatric treatment...

“The need for help is going to be immense. And it could apply to anybody. It’s not about strength or intelligence or anything like that,” said Charles Figley, a professor of psychology at Tulane University who has studied how people fared, mentally and emotionally, in the wake of events such as Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf War, among others.

(Excerpt) Read more at dailynews.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events; US: California
KEYWORDS:

1 posted on 01/20/2025 11:56:40 AM PST by Angelino97
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To: Angelino97

True, native Californians are healing from the twenty years of one party rule oppression.


2 posted on 01/20/2025 12:02:52 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
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To: Angelino97

https://www.lerctr.org/~transit/healy/crap.wav


3 posted on 01/20/2025 12:02:53 PM PST by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion, or satire, or both.)
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

The really hard part is going to be getting them to realize how much of all this is self inflicted. A couple generations of wild fire management neglect; neglecting firefighting to provide dubious protection to a bait fish; empowering an all powerful bureaucracy that will either prevent them from rebuilding or confiscate their property for pie in the sky boondoggles. Without monumental structural change, I am against even one thin dime of Fed money.


4 posted on 01/20/2025 12:08:40 PM PST by RedElement
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To: RedElement

Truth!


5 posted on 01/20/2025 12:09:16 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
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To: Angelino97

The entire region already proved that it is insane by voting for inept Dems who caused this problem year after year.


6 posted on 01/20/2025 12:11:15 PM PST by Opinionated Blowhard (When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.)
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To: Opinionated Blowhard

How do you prove mentally ill people are more mentally ill?


7 posted on 01/20/2025 12:24:40 PM PST by oldasrocks
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To: Angelino97

in a relatively new, self-explanatory field of psychology known as collective trauma.
= = =

A recognition of the Democrat Party.


8 posted on 01/20/2025 12:49:34 PM PST by Scrambler Bob (Running Rampant, and not endorsing nonsense; My pronoun is EXIT. And I am generally full of /S)
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To: Angelino97

Well Andre, I think I know this much: in the wake of events such as Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf War, among others.” Katrina was an act of God, I don’t think mankind can create tropical depressions. The Gulf Wars were created by mankind.
Just my take.


9 posted on 01/20/2025 1:32:36 PM PST by kawhill (I expected someone like you. What did you expect?)
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To: Angelino97

I think it will be hard to determine which mental health problems were caused by the fires and those that were there before.


10 posted on 01/20/2025 3:09:06 PM PST by RetiredTexasVet (We used to be a Republic, we are now a Fascist Klepto-Thugocracy. until Jan 20, 2025)
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To: Angelino97

The crazy left can get crazier? That’s a headline shocker.


11 posted on 01/20/2025 4:03:59 PM PST by If You Want It Fixed - Fix It
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To: Angelino97

The mental health lobby. Always grifting away. What new disorder are they going to invent this time? Whatever it is it will mean more drugs, more shootings, more insanity, not less.


12 posted on 01/21/2025 6:54:35 AM PST by Seruzawa ("The Political left is the Garden of Eden of incompetence" - Marx the Smarter (Groucho))
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