Mark Brayne, former BBC correspondent and now the European director of the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma, offers six tips for covering a traumatic event.
1. Witnessing or experiencing traumatic human distress has an objective effect, on body, on mind and on spirit -- one that's programmed by evolution. There's the trauma-generated pumping of adrenaline. But trauma also makes us wonder about existential questions as well the immediate reporting. Journalists covering the Tsunami disaster are working flat-out, effectively and powerfully, but at the edge of their abilities. No one is superhuman -- and no one can keep doing this for a long period without experiencing the personal impact.
2. Being open to emotional experience makes you a better reporter. If you can't empathise with those whose story you're reporting, you won't be able truly to reflect their experience. But being open, and engaged with intense human distress, means also being open and vulnerable to its longer-term wounding impact. Journalists will already be finding this as the intensity of the story they're covering is beginning truly to sink in.
3. Everyone responds in their own personal way to trauma. It depends on the kind of people we are, the experiences we've had in the past and how we experienced the actual trauma we've been reporting. Many of us will have wobbly moments in the immediate aftermath -- especially when coming off the story after weeks on an adrenaline high. Most, however, will cope pretty well in the longer term. But there will be a minority, who are neither sick nor mad, but who will find things more difficult. There must absolutely be no stigma attached to such experience.
4. An emotional injury is just like a physical one, except it can't be seen. As with a cut or a broken bone, it takes time for emotional systems to heal. Like physical injuries, the body and mind need the emotional equivalent of clean dressings and support. If cuts heal in a week, bones in a couple of months, simple traumatic distress usually begins to clear up in four to six weeks - but remember that memories of the Tsunami's distress, with sometimes physical symptoms of numbing and/or re-experiencing, may resurface months, sometimes even years, later.
5. You can do a lot to look after yourself while exposed to trauma or winding down afterwards.
- Read up on the very simple and now much better-understood science of what trauma is and does. There's more information for example at www.dartcentre.org. If you know the signs and the symptoms, then it will be a lot less confusing if it hits you -- and you can also watch out for your mates.
- While you're on assignment, or working with traumatic material back on base, make sure you get as many breaks as you can, short as well as longer. Step outside and walk in a park or greenery for a few minutes. In down time, read a novel. Listen to music. Do something you enjoy that's not related to trauma. Find reasons to laugh as well as cry.
- Eat and sleep as well as you can. Vegetables, fruit -- everything you know you should do anyway is especially important now. Go easy on caffeine at these times (coffee merely pumps more adrenaline into the system), and remember there's no place in good journalism for competitive sleep deprivation. It's bad for the journalistic judgment, and VERY bad for your health.
Get some simple exercise. The body stores the impact of trauma. Use the body to process it. No need to do a marathon, but a brisk walk, or a jog, or 20 minutes in the gym.
- DON'T FORGET TO BREATHE. If things are getting heavy, close your eyes, breathe gently in, drop your shoulders, hold that breath to the count of five, breathe out gently and when your lungs are empty, hold that for a further count of five. Then breathe slowly in again. Five cycles in all -- it makes a big difference.
- Talk, to a trusted friend or colleague, about what you're doing and experiencing. Don't be ashamed of your own feelings, and don't judge those of your colleagues.
6. If you're a manager, editor, or just a colleague of others who've been exposed to rough stuff, you can make a big difference too. Little gestures have an big and positive impact.
- Get in touch. Ask how they are, and spend time with them.
- Help them with everyday tasks and offer practical support even if they've not asked for it.
- Let them talk - and listen to them without responding with your own experience.
- Don't say you know how they feel; or that they're lucky it wasn't worse; or that they'll get over it; or pull yourself together -- these responses don't help!
- Don't take their feelings personally.
The scope and horror of the trauma doesn't necessarily make...
