Social Health To Prevent Tragedy
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Please be advised that the following program contains audio content that may be graphic and potentially triggering for some listeners. This content may include descriptions or sounds that some may find disturbing. Listener discretion is strongly advised. This is The Last Show with David Cooper.
Yesterday in British Columbia, in the remote town of Tumbler Ridge, the town was struck by tragedy, a horrific school shooting. Nine people were killed, two are seriously injured, another 25 are injured. The suspected shooter was found dead. B.C. 's Minister of Public Safety said the people of Tumbler Ridge remain in a state of crisis following one of the worst mass shootings in our province's and country's history. history I want to talk about the psychological impact the immediate one on surviving students and staff and families in such a small close-knit community of only 2400 people I am here with Steve Jordans a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto Scarborough to discuss Steve welcome to the show I wish you were coming on under better circumstances yeah yeah well I mean we need to learn from these things too so um they're always important to talk through I think
I think for me, what I'm so struck by is how close knit this community must be being so remote, being a community of just over 2000 people. And I think of the sort of day after like the staff, the students going back to the school. What is returning to a scene like that? Really a crime scene after such a tragedy.
Yeah, I mean, it's really tough. And the level of toughness kind of depends on the extent to which a given individual felt like their life was truly in danger. Those kids that were in the middle of it and that literally thought this could be it, our brain does something crazy in that state, we refer to it as PTSD. We think of PTSD as a bad thing. What the brain is actually doing is kind of saying, oh my goodness, I'm in a life or death situation. What was happening just before this? Is there anything in my environment that I can latch onto so that in the future, if that thing happens again, I can be ready for this before it happens. And so that's really what PTSD is. Now, the problem is it was probably a random shooting.
So we have kids who might've I don't know, eaten a sandwich or heard a song or smelled a given smell or whatever it might be. And then suddenly they realize their life is in danger. For those children, that stimulus, whatever it could be, could be an instant trigger to bring them back to that fear that they have. And that's what we really think of as PSD. So for the ones most directly impacted, This is a very strong, enduring thing the brain does. It's meant to keep them safe.
What tragic event occurred in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia?
But in fact, it could literally haunt them and cause them to relive this incident over and over and over.
And that's what's so sad and so troubling of having to continue to go to a school every day in an aftermath like that. Likely, I guess, reliving the trauma over and over again.
Yeah. I mean, for those children, they might literally feel like they're right back there. But for everybody, the way our memory system works, it's all based on cues. So we connect events and stuff with things in the environment, with stuff that was going on. And so, yeah, they'll come back. They'll see that desk where their friend was and their friend is no more there. They will, you know, just imagine and associate so much of that school with the tragedy and that's not something they can control so just walking through and i mean even a parent dropping that child off and and seeing other parents and seeing other children and maybe some of those other parents won't be at the drop-off spot anymore and you know that's enough to kind of bring that person back and and make them experience it you know most most of all learning needs to be safe that's when it when it works well
And that has been scarred for all of them. Very few of them, parents, children alike, are going to feel like that school is a safe place for a long time now.
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