Crime victimization leaves victims, families, and friends—even the community around them—in a
state of turmoil. There is often significant financial loss and physical injury connected with victimization.
But the most devastating part for most victims is the emotional pain caused by crime and the aftermath.The crisis reaction
1. Each person establishes his or her own boundaries, usually based on a certain order and
understanding of the world.
2. Occasional stressors will move individuals out of their state of equilibrium, but most
people, most of the time, respond effectively to most stressors that are within or near their
familiar range of equilibrium.
3. Trauma throws people so far out of that range that it is difficult for them to restore a sense
of balance in life. When they do establish a new sense of balance, it will be a different
“graph” of normal highs and lows than described that individual’s equilibrium prior to the
trauma. It will have new boundaries and a new definition.
4. Trauma may be precipitated by an “acute” stressor or many “chronic” stressors.
a. An acute stressor is usually a sudden, arbitrary, often random event. Crimes committed
by strangers are key examples of such stressors.
b. A chronic stressor is one that occurs over and over again, each time pushing its victims
toward the edge of their state of equilibrium, or beyond. Chronic child, spouse, or
elder abuse are examples of such chronic stressors.
c. “Developmental stressors” come from transitions in life, like adolescence, marriage,
parenthood, and retirement. Such stressors are relevant to the crime victim simply
because people who are enduring a variety of developmental stressors in their lives are
far more susceptible to intense crisis reactions.
B. The crisis reaction: the physical response.
1. Physical shock, disorientation, and numbness.
Initially people often experience a state of “frozen fright” in response to a dangerous
threat. They may realize that something is terribly wrong or that something bad has happened. Long term stress reaction
When someone survives a catastrophic crisis, they often experience stress reactions for
years. Most long-term stress reactions are
traumatic event.1. Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. (PTSD)
a. Diagnosis of syndromes or disorders that are similar to that currently defined as PTSDFor Harper in the law and order episode, she experienced a lot of fear, she moved, she changed her hair style, she couldn't be in a relationship anymore, she had to sleep with runners on, she was basically just leaving in fear. She was in denial that anything was wrong, she refused to admit her fear.
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In
New York, and Bernard Baruch had invited him to dine that evening with mutual friends.
Churchill, riding in a taxi, could not remember Baruch’s exact address, and the driver who
was new to Manhattan was of little help.
Growing increasingly exasperated, Churchill told the driver to let him out on the Central
Park side of Fifth Avenue. He believed that he could recognize Baruch’s house from the
sidewalk. Stepping off the curb to cross Fifth Avenue, Churchill made two mistakes. The red
signal light meant nothing to him because they had not yet been introduced in Great Britain.
Also, forgetting that Americans drive on the right, he looked the wrong way and, seeing no
automobiles, believed that his way was clear.
Immediately, he was struck by a car traveling over thirty miles per hour. He was dragged
several yards by the car, and then flung into the street.
Churchill later wrote:
2001 National Organization for Victim Assistance 7
“There was a moment of a world aglare, a man aghast. . .I do not understand why I was
not broken like an eggshell, or squashed like a gooseberry.” Although in shock and in great
pain, Churchill wiped the streaming blood from his face and assured the driver of the car that
he was blameless. Another taxi stopped, and Churchill was helped into it and taken to Lenox
Hill Hospital. . .
Initially, Churchill’s recovery was swift. . . [His doctor] prescribed rest, and Churchill and
his wife packed for the Bahamas, where they arrived on New Year’s Eve. In Nassau,
Churchill suffered from severe aftershock and depression.
“Vitality only returning slowly,” Churchill wrote on January 3, 1932. Five days later a
nervous reaction struck. He wrote Dr. Pickhardt that he had experienced “a great and sudden
lack of power of concentration, and a strong sense of being unequal to the task which lay so
soon ahead of me.”
Churchill, attended by a nurse, fought insomnia with nightly sedation and forced himself to
exercise a few minutes each day. His easel was there, but did not attract him. He wrote his
son: “I have not felt like opening the paint box, although the seas around these islands are
luminous with the most lovely tints of blue and green and purple.”
His wife, Clementine, also wrote their son: “Last night he was very sad and said that he
had now in the last two years had three very heavy blows. First, the loss of all that money in
the crash, then the loss of his political position in the Conservative Party, and now this terrible
injury — he said he did not think he would ever recover completely from the three events.”
This story illustrates how even a relatively minor individual trauma can cause an extended
trauma reaction. It also underscores that such a trauma may occur in almost anyone — an
esteemed world leader or your neighbor next door. When you think about the numbers of
sudden, random, and arbitrary events that occur in everyday life it is amazing that, as a society,
we have taken so long to begin to respond to the emotional aftermath of trauma.Honestly, i don't think there is really a way to soften the impacts of crime. The emotional impacts are within yourself, and it isn't really anything anybody else can change. Which is sad, but it's the truth. That's why i think it's good, for example, to have free therapy to people that have been sexually assaulted. I think that's all we really can do unfortunately. The Last Lion, William Manchester wrote that on December 12, 1931, Churchill was innormal responses of people who have survived a
