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July 27, 2009

Friends’ support reduces teen depression after terror attacks

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[Transcript]

ATLANTA – In the southern Israeli town of Dimona, citizens thought themselves to be relatively safe from the terrorism experienced in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. But it had its serenity uprooted when a suicide bomber attacked in February 2008. The town’s adolescents were not immune from the psychological effects of the attacks. A Georgia State University professor was part of an international research team looking at effects of friends’ support on depression after the attacks. Associate Professor Chris Henrich explains: (Length: 0:28)

What we discovered is that if kids before the bombing had reported low levels of social support from their friends, the stress that they felt from the bombing led to increased levels of depression. But if they reported high levels of social support before the bombing, then the stress from the bombing did not lead to higher levels of depression. This as well as other findings from our on going project have led us to focus on the potential protective power of social support to buffer Israeli adolescents from the stress associated with terrorism. (Length: 0:47)

None of the study participants actually experienced the violence first hand. But knowing others who had been victims of the attacks, hearing the bombing, or seeing news reports about it affected the participants. (Length: 0:11)

The vast majority of them reported seeing news reports about bombing and feeling stressed about the news reports. In a separate study we tried to tease apart the effects of actually hearing the bombing, versus knowing people who were affected by the bombing, versus hearing about it on the media, we didn’t find any unique effects of the media part of exposure, although other studies have found that watching media reports about other attacks can be traumatizing unto itself. (Length: 0:46)

Schools may play a particularly helpful role in developing interventions in peer groups in a school to bolster social networks from which to get social support. (Length: 0:09)

I think that if we were able to come up with an intervention which really tried to focus on activating positive peer support networks, then that could potentially be powerful and could be replicated in other schools and probably dealing with other types of violence as well. (Length: 0:22)

The study was conducted with Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and appears in the July issue of Pediatrics. For Georgia State Radioline, I’m Jeremy Craig. (Length: 0:09)