Keynote speech to the Global Virtual Summit on COVID-19, August 2020
The pandemic of COVID-19 hit everyone simultaneously as a universal, inescapable external shock. Several elements in the progression of the pandemic rendered it traumatic:
1. The exponential inexorable contagion which fosters a feeling of impending doom (extreme stressor);
2. The extreme uncertainty regarding every facet of the disease – from the pathogen to the nature of the illness through to the long-term social and interpersonal effects of the desperate and ever-escalating attempts to rein it in. This led to rising rates of anxiety, depressive helplessness, hopelessness, and disorientation;
3. A lack of clear horizon and timeline which engender a sense of alarming insecurity;
4. Mortal fear of disability and death;
5. The transformation of the familiar – including one’s body, nearest and dearest, habits, and familiar landmarks – into alien, minacious, estranged entities to be avoided on pain of life, as a condition for survival;
6. The breakdown or incapacitation of all support networks, human and nonhuman (technologies).
The COVID-19 pandemic is a major traumatic event. Will it result in mass PTSD (Post-traumatic Stress Disorder)? Or will we dissociate the events and return to normal the minute an efficacious vaccine or a cure are found?
In countries which succeeded to control the outbreak, indications are that people are not experiencing PTSD – but rather develop traumatic dissociation, which gives rise to anxiety and depression.
I suggest that there are homogenizing effects worldwide mediated via social media, the mass media, and identical measures introduced by political and medical authorities in every corner of the globe.
This homogenization led to collective trauma and the formation of a collective ANP and EP, replete with dissociative symptoms.
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