PTSD

This week my editor offered to send me to a seminar for journalists on coping and preventing Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.

According to the National Institute on Mental Health:

"Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, is an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened."

Problem is, the seminar is the same day as the execution. Regardless, I'm not new to PTSD. I'm a trained Hospice volunteer, have spent time as a rescue volunteer and have done CPR on a couple of people. I've seen people die. I've seen traumatic incidents and violence. I've worked through PTSD.

Experts have discovered that talking about, processing and "debriefing" an incident immediately afterwards helps prevent or lessen PTSD. Journalists covering Katrina, journalists embedded in Iraq, journalists doing anything from crime beats to natural disasters know they're going into a situation where PTSD is likely, if not probable. So should we stop covering these events? Police officers, firemen, rescue workers, Red Cross workers, military men and women - we all put our sanity and our souls on the line to do the things that make up our jobs. Is PTSD just one of the prices we pay and the sacrifices we make? I think so.

Mass trauma, such as even witnessing an event - like watching the 9/11 events unfolding on television - can cause PTSD. So why do we do it? It's a way, I believe, for me as a journalist to convey what happens - what really happens when a man/woman is executed. As some people have told me, they supported the death penalty until they witnessed an execution. This includes police officers, chaplains and attorneys.

I'm going into this with no strong feelings one way or the other about executions. I would tend, as a human being, to understand the strong feelings of anger, a desire for revenge if a loved one were murdered. I'm told the families of the victims often celebrate the execution - but then come out somber and quiet themselves. The murderer gets more victims as their witnessing his death leaves the family who witnesses it, with PTSD or at least the disturbing complicity in a state-sanctioned murder.

As a Christian, I believe God forgives all - even the murderers - if they ask. It's part of my faith. No matter how heinous a crime, if a person asks for forgiveness and turns their heart and life over to God, they're forgiven. Only God sees the heart, but I believe as long as a person can draw a breath and ask for that, it's given. My faith then, sees executions another way. As a journalist I see things as a series of events and work to report them without bias or advocacy. Yet - at some point I've got to acknowledge who I am as I give readers a story about the execution of a human being.

I'm hoping this journal/blog gives me the debriefing (part of it anyway) and preparation I'll need to cope with what I'm about to witness. Others, I know, are thinking the same things I am - "How will I react?" or "What will it be like?" Chaplains have told me the men and women on death row ask the same thing. "What will it be like?" and "How will I react?"

The only thing is - the witnesses will walk away able to share their answers. Emmett will not.