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1987 NOVA Newsl. 1 (1987)

handle is hein.journals/novan1987 and id is 1 raw text is: NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR V/CT/M ASS/STANCE Newslett Volume 11, Number 1 ;er January 1987 The Crisis Response Team Reports on Edmond, Oklahoma Massacre by Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D., with Kart'linn D. Huntting Dr. Mantell is chief psychologist for the San Diego Police Department, an assistant clinical professor at the medical school at the University of California, San Diego, and maintains a private practice. We cry with you, we pray for you, we care about you, our friends. That's not the usual sort of note a letter carrier expects to find left for him or her along the delivery route. And postal employees aren't ac- customed to seeing their post office adorned with wreaths and baskets of flowers. But then again, postal employees are also unaccustomed to seeing and hearing fourteen of their fellow workers hunted down, cornered, and executed. After all, besides a school or a McDonald's restaurant, what could be a safer place? A post office, of course. Another symbol of stabil- ity, constancy, and security. Right? Wrong. Twenty years ago, Charles Whitman gunned down forty-seven people, murdering six- teen, on the campus of the Univer- sity of Texas, shattering the illusion of safety. James Oliver Huberty told his wife one summer day in 1984 that he was going hunting ... hunting for people. On that day in July, Huberty committed the bloodiest one-day rampage by a single gun- man in the history of the United States. Where? A McDonald's restaurant. He randomly executed twenty-one men, women, and children while Ronald McDonald towered over the helter-skelter, winking and smiling, his plastic ex- pression somehow a cold reminder of the false illusion of security. Next came the post office. And this time it was another twisted, angry soul who brought a com- munity to its knees, Patrick Henry Sherrill. Human induced violence leaves its mark not only on the body, but on the spirit. Like a malignancy stealthily creeping within an indi- vidual, so too steals the psycholog- ical aftereffect.of a major traumatic event. The post traumatic stress as- sociated with violence influences many beyond the immediate circle of victims. The very heart of a com- munity can be deeply affected when such catastrophe strikes. Beverly Raphael, writing in 1975 about crisis counseling, noted that rescue workers have been ignored by health professionals despite sig- nificant mental and physical com- plaints following crisis situations. William Kroes, in his classic 1976 work entitled Society's Victim: The Police, portrayed our nation's law enforcement professionals as being at higher risk for stress- related diseases than people in less stressful occupations. A study encompassing 20,000 police officers from twenty-nine different police departments re- vealed that twenty percent of the officers had drug related symp- toms, twenty-three percent had significant alcohol related pathol- ogy, thirty-seven percent reported marital/family problems, and, most noteworthy, thirty-six percent had serious health problems including heart and stomach disorders. Since 1980, I have been the chief psychologist for the San Diego Police Department. My involve- ment with police officers grew from work I did with the police in the aftermath of the mid-air colli- sion of a Boeing 727 and a Cessna 172 in September 1978. The officers who responded im- mediately to this tragedy had no (Continued next page) In This Issue: * Network News ...... 3 * Profile.............4 * NOVA Awards .......6 This newsletter is published with funding from the Office of Justice Programs of the U.S. Department of Justice (Grant number 85-SN-CX-0006). Views expressed in the Newsletter do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of the U.S. Justice Department or of the National Organization for Victim Assistance.

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