Posttraumatic reactions and coping among high school students following the massacre1

Dmitry Leykin & Mooli Lahad, Community Stress Prevention Center, March 2011

The was a mass murder incident at the Island of Peace, a joint Israeli-Jordanian park on the border between and . The shooting attack occurred on March 13, 1997 when Jordanian Army Corporal Ahmed Daqamseh opened fire on a group of Israeli schoolgirls, killing seven. King Hussein's visit to Israel a few days later to pay respects to the grieving families deeply moved the Israeli public (Wikipedia, n.d.).

The victims were part of a group of seventh and eighth grade students of the Amit- Furst school, a Zionist religious junior-high school in who were participating in a field trip.

During the months post incident, as part of the psychological intervention in the school, the counseling team wished to assess the reactions of the girls who were directly or indirectly involved in the event and their ways of coping, in an attempt to evaluate the efficacy of their intervention with these classes..

Questionnaires were administered approximately two months post incident (May, 1997) among 8th graders female students (N = 75; M age = 14.12, SD = 0.36). The following are the main results of the query:

- 48% of the girls (n = 36) participated in the trip to the Island of Peace. Out of these girls, approximately 52% reported being eye witnesses of the massacre.

- Approximately 89% of all participants reported that they had a close or very close acquaintance with the victims/casualties.

1 The above data was located in the archives of CSPC during the recent transition to our new site. CSPC team was involved in the immediate and intermediate psychosocial work with the schoolteachers, the students and the management of the school in 1997. We have decided to publish the results of this project as a service to the professional and general public.

- 73% reported to a great extent that they feel that only by a miracle or chance they were not hurt. Only 3.4% reported that they feel so to a slight extent. A positive weak, but significant, correlation was found between extent of acquaintance with victims/casualties and the feeling of survival by miracle, r(69) = .28, p< .05

- Only 8.0% reported to a very great extent that they fully returned to their pre-disaster life, 41.3% reported that their life slightly returned to their pre- disaster condition, 42.7% reported that their life did not so much returned to pre-disaster condition, and 8% reported that their life did not returned to pre-disaster condition.

Post event reactions

Students were asked to indicate and describe unusual manifestations that they were experiencing as a result of the disaster. From the results we learn that:

- 36% reported on sleeping disturbances and difficulties

- 32% reported on nightmares and fearful dreams

- 21% reported on general fears accompanying them during this time

- 15% reported on intrusion thoughts and images of the event

- 11% reported on disbelief and difficulty to acknowledge the incident.

- 11% reported daily function impairment

- 9% reported on avoidant behavior and social disengagement

- 8% reported on aches and somatic complains

- Other reactions included concentration problems, anger, frustrations, lack of appetitive, loss of interest in life, shame and general sadness.

Students were requested to rate the intensity of their reactions on a 4-point scale (1-not at all, 2- to a slight extent, 3-to some extent, 4-to great extent). Of the 50 students who rated this question, 81% reported the intensity of their reactions to some or to a great extent, while 20% reported their intensity to a slight extent.

Approximately 62% reported on 2 or fewer reactions as a result of the disaster, 17% report on 3 reactions, and 11% reported 4 or more reactions.

Coping

In order to evaluate students' ways of coping and understand how students appraise their coping with the difficulties resulted from the disaster, students were asked to answer an open ended question ("what did help you to cope with the feelings and thoughts as a result of the disaster?") and rate on a 4 point scale (1-not successful coping to 4-very successful coping). Answers on the open-ended question were coded in accordance with the integrative model approach BASIC PH (Lahad, 1993) by 2 raters.

80 68 70

60

49.3 50

40 37.3

30 Utalization%

20 14.7 16 8 10

0 B A S I C PH

According to the above figure, the dominant coping channel among the students was the social channel (utilized by 68% of the students). Students reported that being with friends, family members, relatives, school staff, educational staff and the presence of other people around them were a significant help. Mobilization of the social channel was significantly and positively correlated with appraisal of the activities (carried out via intervention in order to cope with the feelings) efficacy, r(74) = .26, p < .05.

The second most dominant coping channel was the emotional channel (utilized by approximately 49% of the students). In many cases this channel was manifested together with the social channel – in the way that students reported that

being with others offered opportunity for pain and distress manifestation. However, sometimes students reported on emotions venting throughout crying or speaking, accompanied by feelings of relief. The third dominant channel was the belief system (37.3%). Students reported that discussions with the Rabbi, reading Psalms, and the belief that their dead friends are now in a safe place helped them to cope. Some evidence for posttraumatic growth (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 1996) was found in one report where a student reported positive changes in life in the way that she became more caring and helping, and started to appreciate life. The less dominant channels included the cognitive, the imaginative and the physical channel. Possible explanations for these findings are that some of the channels generally manifest themselves less in such population, and specifically among females and in this case being students of a religious school . In a recent survey (Leykin, 2010), on one hand a negative correlative was found between utilization of the physical channel (PH) and religiosity levels, while on the other girls tended to use less frequently the cognitive channel (C). In addition, among the whole population, of the six channels, the least frequent use appears to be in the imaginative channel (I). Utilization of the imaginative channel, however, in the current report was positively and significantly correlated with the subjective intensity rating of the post disaster reactions, r(50) = .50, p < .01.

67% (compared to 33%) classified their coping as successful to very successful. Appraising great success in coping was positively associated with mobilization of the social (S) channel, r(74) = .28, p < .05, the extent to which students estimated their lives have returned to pre-disaster condition, r(75) = .30, p < .01, and finally with estimating the number of class activities/discussions during the school intervention, r(73) = .41, p < .001.

Evaluation of the class intervention

Students were asked to refer to the number of class activities/discussions during the school intervention, and to indicate to what extent these activities helped them to cope with thoughts and feelings resulted from the disaster.

80% 74%75 %

70% 67% 62%

60%

50% Not at all 40% Slightly 33% 31% Considerably 30% 25% 22% Very Much

resultedthefromdisaster 20%

8%

Theextenttowhichtheactivities helped 10%

studentstocopewiththoughts andfeelings 4% % % % % % % % No activities One activity Few activities Were a lot of were held activities

As the above figure indicates, as students reported on more activities, the greater the perceived benefit from these activities was reported (and vice versa). In fact, approximately 60% (n = 44) indicated that there were a lot of activities following the disaster, and 54% (n = 40) reported that the activities helped them to a considerable or to a great extent. Spearman's rank correlation coefficient indicated weak, but statistical significant positive correlation between the occurrence of special activities as the result of the critical incident and the perceived efficacy of these activities in assisting coping, r(71) = .23, p < .05.

References

Lahad, S. (1993). Tracing Coping Resources through a Story in Six Parts – The "BASIC PH" model. In: Psychology at School and the Community During Peaceful and Emergency Times (pp. 55 – 70). Tel-Aviv, Levinson-Hadar, (In Hebrew)

Leykin, D. (2010). BASIC PH Survey: Findings from a representative sample of the Israeli Jewish population. Unpublished manuscript.

The Island of Peace massacre. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved March 28, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_Peace_massacre

Tedeschi, R. G. & Calhoun, L. G. (1996). The Posttraumatic Growth Inventory: Measuring the positive legacy of trauma. Journal of traumatic stress, 9, 455-471.