Trauma was manufactured in Salem Village

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
October 6, 2024

In 1692, trauma was manufactured in Salem Village so successfully that it spread beyond the population of 500. Whatever you read or have been led to believe about the witch trials, understand one simple, basic fact. None of the people making accusations were telling the truth. What is worse is they knew it.

If you have PTSD, you survived something. That's the only way for it to inflict your thoughts. As bad as it is, imagine if you discovered the trauma you survived was manufactured by influential people. Then imagine strangers lying and accusing you so forcefully that even your neighbors supported their accusations.

Why would they be willing to do such a sinister thing? Fear it could happen to them if they didn't.

That was how the people of Massachusetts had to live in 1692. It wasn't bad enough that they had to struggle with harsh winters, poor crops, and fear of more attacks by Native American tribes trying to take back their land. They had to cope with far too many people searching for something or people to blame for their suffering.

That was fed by the household of Reverand Samual Parris. People paid taxes and were supposed to give him firewood, but he wasn't paid his salary, and the family often lived in a cold home. Precisely what caused the children to begin making false accusations remains a mystery. They were the spark that started the manufactured traumas. Thomas Putnam used the girls had as a means of revenge against neighbors. After all, he had God on his side since the Reverand was involved. 

Back then, they were easy targets if people did not attend church. Sarah Osborne was one of the first accused because Putnam grudged her. She was ill and didn't attend church, adding to notches against her. She was also the first to die because of the lies. She died in the Boston jail, and her family received a bill for her incarceration as well as the shackles to prevent her from flying away. 

Most people remember Tituba confessing, but she escaped being put to death after she confessed to witchcraft. It was claimed that those who confessed would be judged by God, but it would have been more plausible that she could name more names and be believed. Sarah Good was one of them, but she was pregnant at the time of her conviction. Her four-year-old daughter Dorothy was forced to accuse her mother and confess to witchcraft, as well as join her mother in prison. The townspeople learned the lesson that no one would be spared if they didn't play along, including their own children.

There is a correlation between the witch trials and PTSD. It was something no one got over. Between the guilt the accusers carried and the tormented survivors, no one ever escaped the horrors of that year. They did not believe in science. They believed in God's wrath and the devil. Anyone suffering from the infliction of agony was either in league with Satan or being judged by God. Once the trials ended, the people pushed for a Day of Atonement.

January 14, 1697- The Massachusetts General Court orders a day of public fasting and prayer in atonement for errors made by the colony, including the witchcraft trials. On this day, twelve of the jurors of the Court of Oyer and Terminer sign a statement of apology for their role in the witch trials. In addition, Samuel Sewall, who served as a magistrate in 1692, stands before his congregation while his minister reads a prepared statement aloud. In this declaration, Sewall acknowledges his feelings of shame for his role in the witchcraft trials and asks God to pardon his sins.

It may have occurred to you that you know exactly what they were going through since we go between God causing our traumas or Satan causing the possession of our lives. I know I did when surviving was just the beginning of the battle to survive being a survivor. 

PTSD: The trauma experienced by migrants is typically two-fold

Border crisis complicated by migrant PTSD: report

NY Post
By Jesse O’Neill
January 1, 2023

A Border Protection officer leading zip-tied migrants after they were taken into custody on January 1, 2023.James Keivom

The trauma experienced by migrants is typically two-fold: they are suffering from the memories they left behind while also carrying around mental anguish from their journeys, Byimana explained.

As a surge of asylum seekers overwhelm southern border cities, “most” of the migrants are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder from their harrowing trip into the US.

The migrants’ arduous ordeals are often marred with violence, kidnappings and sexual assaults, according to Dr. Brian Elmore, who volunteers for weekend shifts at a shelter in El Paso, Texas.

“Most of our patients have symptoms of PTSD. I want to initiate a screening for every patient,” said Elmore, an emergency medicine doctor at Clinica Hope.

In many cases, the grueling hardships had been exacerbated by the pandemic emergency measure Title 42, which has been used to expel more than 2.5 million migrants from the US since March 2020, according to the Saturday report by the Associated Press.
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Hadley's Half-Hanged Mary

The Witch of Hadley: Mary Webster, the Weird, and the Wired
The Massachusetts Review
Anna Smith
October 15, 2019

Mary Webster’s troubles started not long after what non-native historians typically refer to as Metacom’s (or King Philip’s) War—America’s most devastating civil war if judged in terms of deaths per capita. This conflict included an attack on Hadley in 1675, and it seems likely that the witchcraft scares were at least in part related to fears stemming from these conflicts. You don’t have to be a trauma expert to imagine that settlers in Massachusetts, just a decade later, might have still been a bit unhinged.

 

It is in Hutchinson’s history, written some years after the actual events, that we first hear of the hanging of Mary Webster. He writes that a group of “brisk lads” went to her house, hanged her till she was near death (did they believe she was dead?), then cut her down, rolled her into a snow bank, and left her there.

But Hutchinson ends on a cheerful note, “It happened that she survived and the melancholy man died.”

Apparently, she lived another eleven years and became known as “Half-Hanged Mary.” In 1985, Margaret Atwood dedicated her novel The Handmaid’s Tale to Mary Webster, her ancestor, and ten years later, wrote a poem to “Half-Hanged Mary.” The resurgent popularity of Atwood’s novel and its Hulu series, as well as the anticipation around the release of the novel’s sequel, tell us that this noxious strain in our collective consciousness is still in need of healing. We’re a long way from understanding everything about misogyny, groupthink, and terror.

If people already think you’re a witch, it’s hard to imagine what surviving a hanging would do for your reputation. I like to envision that first encounter with her neighbors. And yet, Judd tells us she “died in peace.”

 

You can watch her story here 

 

Study found 63% had significant symptoms of PTSD families of Covid-19 ICU patients

"Even that small act of compassion from the health care team to the family can really have a really powerful impact for those family members and their risk of developing these (PTSD) symptoms," Amass said.

And that is how everyone heals, no matter the cause of PTSD. Compassion goes a long way toward helping them.  When you read the rest of the article, please keep that in mind so that you never undervalue the power of love.

Family members of Covid-19 ICU patients may emerge with a different condition, study says

CNN
By Madeline Holcombe
April 25, 2022

Amass and his team surveyed family members in the months after a loved one was admitted to the ICU with Covid-19 in 12 hospitals across the country. Many of the people studied were limited in visitation and contact with the patient. The study found that of the families that responded to the survey, 201 out of 316 (about 63%) had significant symptoms of PTSD.

CNN)When thinking of post-traumatic stress disorder, your mind may go to a movie about war.

It's a quiet day at base camp when suddenly the enemy launches an attack. The main character is scrambling to respond to incoming fire, making quick decisions about how to respond to danger that is largely out of their control.

In many ways, it's a lot like the experiences of families of patients in the intensive care unit with Covid-19, said Dr. Timothy Amass, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

These family members, too, often see an abrupt change in circumstance, have to make difficult decisions quickly and feel a loss of control, he said. And often, they come away from the experience with symptoms of anxiety, depression and PTSD, according to a new study published Monday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.
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