I have a lot of respect for psychologists. As such I wouldn't be studying it, if I didn't. But I do think that some of the research that gets done these days is really unnecessary, because it really does point out simply the very obvious things. Like this article Serious Emotional Disturbances Found Among Children After Katrina. I mean - isn't that really obvious?! To me it's like saying - people who survived the Holocaust had various emotional disturbances afterwards. Isn't it more interesting, and perhaps useful to look at how these can be avoided, or minimised, or what therapy methods work best during crisis situations and thereafter. Simply stating that - yeah, some kids were disturbed after seeing their homes destroyed and dead bodies floating on the streets, doesn't really do much, does it?
I would have thought that you need to find out what emotional disturbances the children are suffering from before you can work out how to help them? Also it would then help any future incidents like this to know the long term effects and how to help them?
ReplyDeletething is - without doing much digging, I would guess that A LOT of research has already been done on trauma and disorders that happen after it. I mean the best example is post-traumatic stress disorder, and a number of typical disorders that accompany it. So just doing a study that says that children do get disturbed is nothing new in itself. Long term effects are also known from other studies... 'cos this stuff has been researched for decades...
ReplyDeleteThey could also be trying to work out the effects on this particular group of children and to follow their particular progress. I am sure that they are also offering help to the suffers, not just researching them. If they are only researching then yes that is a problem.
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