Associations between News Media Coverage of the 11 September Attacks and Depression in Employees of New York City Area Businesses

Abstract

Research has examined the association between contact with media coverage of mass trauma events and various psychological outcomes, including depression. Disaster-related depression research is complicated by the relatively high prevalence of the major depressive disorder in general populations even without trauma exposure. The extant research is inconclusive regarding associations between disaster media contact and depression outcomes, in part, because most studies have not distinguished diagnostic and symptomatic outcomes, differentiated postdisaster incidence from prevalence, or considered disaster trauma exposures. This study examined these associations in a volunteer sample of 254 employees of New York City businesses after the 11 September 2001, terrorist attacks. Structured interviews and questionnaires were administered 35 months after the attacks. Poisson and logistic regression analyses revealed that post-9/11 news contact significantly predicted the number of postdisaster persistent/recurrent and incident depressive symptoms in the full sample and in the indirect and unexposed groups. The findings suggest that clinical and public health approaches should be particularly alert to potential adverse postdisaster depression outcomes related to media consumption in disaster trauma-unexposed or indirectly-exposed groups.

Disasters, Diagnosis, and Distress: Multiple Perspectives, Populations, and Methodologies

“…Methodological rigor in these studies was demonstrated by the adherence to established criteria for trauma exposure for the diagnosis of PTSD, which is a pivotal issue for assessment of PTSD in disaster-exposed populations and necessitating differentiation of trauma from other types of stressors. A specific type of stressor examined in two studies in this review [1,4] was contact with disaster-related media, and both articles were adherent to the PTSD criteria definition of trauma exposure that specifically excludes witnessing or hearing of the disaster only through media.…”

“…An original research article in this Special Issue by Pfefferbaum et al [4] examined MDD in relation to 9/11 news media consumption in a subset of 254 members of the same 9/11 dataset collected by the team of North and colleagues included in the two studies above. The methodological advantages of this dataset include not only structured diagnostic interviews but also the separate analysis of MDD diagnosis, symptoms, and associated levels of functioning.…”

Women as Terrorists: a Motivational Factor Becomes a Terrorist In Indonesia

“…Here, the term assumption is deliberately used, although institutions' inscription is an assumption and an activity. However, it is essential to note that the agency's assumption as the end of feminist political action is at the root of the need for the inscription" (Pfefferbaum et al, 2021).…”

Threat through the Screen? Association between Proximity and/or Watching Media Coverage of a Terrorist Attack and Health

“…First, many studies are performed long after the initial event. For example, some are performed one to two months later [7], seven months later [6] to even 35 months later [8]. As these studies asked the respondent to recall months later how much media on a terrorist attack someone watched during the days after the attack, a recall bias is highly probable.…”