Recently, mass killings have been front and center in the news. The terrorist attacks in Paris struck a chord worldwide, and similar attacks in Beirut, Baghdad, Mali, Lake Chad, and elsewhere have made the horror seem never-ending. Yesterday marked the three-year anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting and two weeks ago another shooting in San Bernardino topped a long list of harrowing incidents in the United States. While the political discourse focuses on how to prevent future tragedies from happening, survivors and the families and friends of victims are left to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives.
Their grief is acute and can lead to many downstream consequences, not least of all post-traumatic stress. Symptoms include flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety, and depression, which can persist for a long time, as in the story of a teenage Syrian refugee who carried the blown-up body parts of his mother and sister out of their demolished house. Two years later, he is still tormented by the experience.
[For more of this story, written by Kasley Killam, go to http://www.scientificamerican....eaning-in-suffering/]
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