A qualitative longitudinal study of feelings, coping, and making meaning as recounted by Oklahoma City bombing survivors after nearly a quarter century.

Abstract

Introduction: Virtually nothing is known about how thoughts and feelings, coping, and processing of terrorism by survivors of terrorism evolve as decades pass. Qualitative longitudinal studies conducted in future decades of the lives of terrorism survivors through detailed individual narratives can deliver new knowledge about cognitive and emotional recovery and the development of new meaning in the experience of surviving a terrorist attack. Method: This longitudinal qualitative study of directly exposed survivors of a terrorist bombing attack on the Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Building was conducted using open-ended interviews nearly a quarter century after the disaster. Results: Survivors processed their early bombing experience and completed the trajectory of their recovery over subsequent decades. They detailed strategies that helped them cope, including mental health care, social support from others, religion, talking about the bombing, memorialization, and meaning established over their long journey across time since the bombing. The meaning was expressed in both philosophical terms describing new perspectives toward life and important effects on religious and spiritual beliefs. Conclusions: Clinicians can appreciate that these survivors’ expressed cognitions and emotions and efforts to process and make meaning of their bombing experience may reflect normative journeys toward resolving their experiences in the evolving course of their lives, rather than simply manifestations of psychopathology and unhealthy responses to their highly abnormal experience of terrorism. Clinical restraint may be indicated in passing judgment on the progress of survivors toward processing their experience. This material may provide avenues for clinical exploration.