When the news breaks the journalist: PTSD

When the news breaks the journalist: PTSD
By Frederik Joelving
NEW YORK | Fri Dec 17, 2010 4:08pm EST
(Reuters Health) - Chris Cramer, 62, was a fledgling war correspondent when one spring day 30 years ago he got much closer to the battle than he'd ever intended.

Just back from Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, his boss at the BBC had asked him to fly to Tehran, where militants were holding dozens of Americans hostage at the U.S. embassy.

But as he went to pick up his visa in London on April 30, 1980, he jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire: Six gunmen stormed the Iranian embassy, taking Cramer and 25 other people hostage.

"I lasted two days before I became sick -- well, I actually feigned a heart attack to get out," said Cramer, now global editor of multimedia at Reuters in New York.

While the experience left his body unscathed, his mental health was in tatters.

"I went through real anguish for a couple of years," he said. "I had flashbacks, I had extraordinary claustrophobia, which I'd never had before. For several years, I did not go to a cinema, I did not go into an elevator. If I ever went into a restaurant, I positioned myself near the door for a fast exit. For many, many months after the incident I checked under my car every morning before driving it. I was a basket case, I was a mess."

It is becoming increasingly clear that there is nothing unique about Cramer's case. In fact, a 2003 survey found, more than a quarter of war correspondents struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

That's just shy of the 30 percent of Vietnam veterans who have suffered the mental breakdown, and nearly four times higher than in the general population, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. And there are signs that journalists may be facing more dangers now than ever, putting both their physical and mental health at risk.

"There are a lot of undetected emotional problems in the profession," said Dr. Anthony Feinstein, a psychiatrist at the University of Toronto, Canada, and one of the first to explore the psychological toll of war reporting. "Some of the big organizations are very aware of it, but many are not."
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When the news breaks the journalist: PTSD