Community Counterterrorism Initiative

Community Counterterrorism Initiative

Potential Terrorists Events

The diverse nature of the attacks that may include bombings, aircraft engineering specific targets or dissemination of biological agents such as Anthrax bacillus, creates a sense of vulnerability that has deleterious effects on the mental health of those exposed (Hussain et al., 2012). Other potential attacks would be: radiological, nuclear, biological, chemical, no mass media, and cyberspace as a common denominator in a community.

Psychological, Behavioral and Cognitive Impact

After a terrorist attack, immediately are various psychological reactions in people who have suffered. The person tries to defend its interests, a fact that contributes to further most problems and encourages called secondary victimization. The primary would be derived directly from the offense, while than secondary concerns all psychic attacks (unintended but obvious) that the victim receives during the police investigation and throughout the legal proceedings (interrogatories, reconstruction facts, confrontation with the perpetrator, slow processes in the system judiciary, etc.). In fact, in recent years, importance has been given gradually to this type of victimization for their contribution to the chronicity of the typical psychopathological after effect arising after the aggression.

This concept of secondary victimization is very relevant in the case of victims of terrorist acts, due to its connection to the reactions of helplessness, anxiety and depression. Therefore, secondary victimization contribute to a further aggravate possible mental injuries generated by the traumatic event that is a terrorist act (Gaibulloev & Sandler, 2009). Thus, as traumatic event, terrorism would be perceived by the person as a negative event, abruptly lived would lead to helplessness, would endanger the physical or psychological integrity of a person and the victim would a negative emotional situation in which capabilities would be depleted coping with common psychological resources. This type of facts violence would break the feeling of security of the individual and of “Contagion” is involvement of all the socio / family of the person. With However, the overall process of victimization takes the victim to certain cognitive biases: 1) consider that the world is evil, 2) having no sense, 3) no self dignity and 4) that people are not honest.

Four are the beliefs that I believe have been appearing in the victims are: that the world is evil, it makes no sense, that self has no dignity and that people are not honest, in general, have total distrust the world around them.

Anxious reactions - depression and other psychological problems

Perhaps the most studied psychiatric disorder in relation to victims of terrorist attacks is the posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Although will be discussed later, a number of diseases commonly the pathology associated with which, however, are entities differentiated psychopathological (Canetti-Nisim et al., 2009). This would include:

Depression: many victims suffer subsequent depressive episodes, consisting of loss of interest, decreased self-esteem and even in the more serious cases, recurrent suicidal ideation, especially when these people have lost loved ones during the terrorist attacks.

Panic attacks: those who have experienced trauma have many opportunities to experience panic attacks when they are exposed to ...