Regional
(2009-04-20)
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GREELEY, CO
(KUNC) -
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Many in the state of Colorado will at some point today - pause and reflect on the decade that has passed since the shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton. Others will not. Medically speaking, KUNC commentator Dr. Marc Ringel says that might be the healthier thing to do.
Today is the tenth anniversary of the shootings at Columbine. So, it's a good time to take stock.
This year there have already been eight mass murders in our beloved country, including: a rampage at an immigrant center in New York State that left 14 dead; a single killer who assassinated 10 people in Alabama; and a shooting spree that saw 8 human beings murdered in a North Carolina nursing home.
Ten years ago today Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold stalked the halls of Columbine High School in Jefferson County, armed with automatic weapons that they used methodically to kill a dozen students and one teacher and to wound twenty-three others before turning the guns on themselves. Our world came to an emotional standstill for weeks in the aftermath of this horrific slaughter.
Now it seems we hardly pause to acknowledge the occurrence of equally grizzly events which are occurring at the rate of nearly two a month. Such apparent nonchalance in the face of deadly violence is not altogether a bad thing. Sure, we want to stay sensitive to the pain of ourselves and of others so we can generate the compassion that helps us to heal and the passion that moves us to fix things. But we cannot live acceptable lives if our skin is perpetually covered with raw nerves.
For our own good, we need sometimes to be able to put aside large chunks of anguish. If not, we risk falling into post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a state of perpetually raw nerves induced by horrifying, ugly, scary experience. PTSD first gained real credence when invoked to explain the emotional devastation found in a significant portion of Vietnam combat vets. A 1990 study estimated that nearly one in three soldiers who'd seen action in Southeast Asia suffered post-traumatic stress disorder. The nervous systems of these unfortunate men were prone to being thrust into overdrive--in the form of flashbacks, insomnia, and panic attacks--by memories of battlefield horrors.
Today we face another huge cohort of soldiers who are returning from our latest conflicts, in Iran and Afghanistan. Many of these young women and men have received significant doses of the sort of dreadful experience that war is so good at dishing up.
Meanwhile, there's a big debate about PTSD going on among mental health professionals, some of whom say the affliction is not nearly so common as once claimed. There are even critics who insist that the whole concept of PTSD is imprecise and overblown, and that hanging the diagnosis on a veteran may actually get in the way of his recovery from the traumas of war.
To be sure, nearly everybody who has been exposed to horrific violence can expect up to a few years of severe emotional challenge as they re-integrate into [quote-unquote] "normal society." Most of these people, the revisionists say, need love and compassion and time to heal, not psychiatrists and counseling.
Fortunately, healthy people can usually expect their nervous system to be dulled by severe and repeated insults. If it weren't for the dulling, we'd all be at risk of developing the emotional hyper-reactivity of PTSD victims: suffering more than we need to; unable to connect with our brethren; and paralyzed when it comes to addressing the actual causes of violence.
So, here's to remembering the Columbine victims. And here's to forgetting them too. © Copyright 2012, KUNC
