THE ROUGH GUIDE TO PSYCHOLOGYcertain compulsive actions, such as hand-washing or the checking of
gas hobs. In 2008, Mary Robertson and Andrea Cavanna described an
extreme case of OCD in which a British boy became distressed because
he thought the 9/11 terrorist attacks were his fault. He’d failed to walk
on a particular white mark on the road – one of his compulsive rituals –
and shortly afterwards had heard the news from the US. Fortunately, the
boy’s psychologists were able to persuade him that he wasn’t responsible,
partly by explaining that because of the time difference between the US
and the UK, he’d missed his ritual after the attacks had taken place.
Another form of anxiety is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD),
which usually arises after someone has been in a terrifying, life-threat-
ening situation. Car crashes, rape, natural disasters, physical assault – all
these kinds of experience can leave people at risk of developing the
condition. Typical symptoms, including flashbacks to the traumatic
event and a desperate desire to avoid reminders of what happened, have
in fact been reported since at least ancient Egyptian times. During World
War I the condition was known as shell-shock, and it remains as much of
a threat to combat troops today as ever.
Civilians caught up in war are, of course, also particularly prone,
although surprisingly this is less often researched. The clinical psycholo-
gists Howard Johnson and Andrew Thompson at the University of
Sheffield drew attention to that imbalance in 2008, publishing a review
of the few studies that have looked at rates of PTSD and its duration
among civilian survivors of war and torture. Rates of PTSD varied hugely
from six percent to more than ninety percent, probably reflecting the
different questionnaires used, language problems, and the diversity of
experiences the survivors had lived through. Unsurprisingly perhaps,
women and the elderly were found to be at increased risk, though that
may have been because of the kinds of traumas they’d suffered, rather
than any inherent vulnerability.
Several forms of psychological therapy have been found to be effective
for treating PTSD, including cognitive behavioural therapy (see p.348)
and eye-movement desensitization and re-processing – an evidence-
based, but still controversial treatment that involves the traumatized
client recalling and holding in mind a painful memory, while simultane-
ously tracking with their eyes the horizontal movements of a therapist’s
finger. People with PTSD often have only a fragmented, toxic memory of
what happened to them, and part of the aim of both these therapeutic
approaches is to help those with PTSD to process and manage their
memories better (see also Chapter 4).