Sniper darkens US mood, shatters sense of safety
( 2002-10-17 10:48 ) (7 )

A Montgomery County police officer patrols with his shotgun, October 16, 2002, after a call reporting a man with a rifle near the Grosvenor Metro subway station in Bethesda, Maryland. No suspect was found in the incident. Police continue to search for a sniper who has now murdered nine people in shootings in the suburbs of Washington. [Reuters]

The series of sniper attacks around Washington has demonstrated once again that the sense of invulnerability Americans enjoyed before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has been shattered, possibly forever.

"The reality of modern living is that it's going to be@dangerous than it was before. We need to acknowledge that and move on. Your outer life may become more chaotic but you draw strength from your inner life," said Glenn Schiraldi, a public health professor at the University of Maryland who had written extensively about stress management and has advised the Pentagon on post-traumatic stress syndrome.

"There will always be a certain percentage of people who give in to fear. But studies of soldiers in wartime show that the ones who cope are those who focus on what they need to do and do it rather than allowing fear to take over," he said.

A marksman armed with a high-powered weapon has killed nine people and wounded two in the past two weeks in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C. The unsuspecting victims, who came from all walks of life and different ethnic groups, were picked off with single shots while they went about their daily business.

Even without that trauma, there seem to be many reasons to be anxious in the United States today. The effects of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon still linger, especially since nobody knows whether Osama bin Laden, the man blamed for masterminding them, is alive or dead.

What is certain is that his al Qaeda organization is still alive and active. It may have been involved in the weekend bombing of a night club in Bali that killed more than 180 people as well as a recent attack on a French tanker in the Gulf.

The person who sent anthrax through the US mail to politicians and journalists is also still at large, a year after killing five people and infecting 13 others.

Meanwhile, the country is preparing for possible war against Iraq, the stock market is heavily down for the year and many people fear for their jobs.

"Generally there is a higher level of anxiety among my patients but it is not all that dramatic. On a scale of 1 to 100, I would say anxiety has risen by 5 to 10 points," said Uzi ben Ami, a psychologist in Maryland specializing in children and teen-agers.

"Some individuals clearly experience great anxiety. But most have rational explanations of what is going on and are not giving way to fear," he said.

Before Sept. 11, 2001, many Americans felt their country was somehow invulnerable to external threats. That was despite the fact that the United States had experienced attacks, including the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people, and the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. which killed six.

MORE ATTACKS EXPECTED

"There is no doubt that 9/11 changed our expectation of attack. Now, we talk about the fact that more terrorist acts are just a matter of time," said Frank Ochberg, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Michigan State University.

Under such circumstances, he said, there was a natural tendency to look for a single enemy and to try to make sense of the world by dividing it into good versus evil. That was precisely what US President George W. Bush was trying to do by mobilizing public opinion for a war against Iraq.

"We are at a complicated, difficult and dangerous time. Many of us are trying to resist the idea that we have a single enemy out there and if we only defeated that threat we would be safe," Ochberg said.

Pennsylvania State University psychiatrist Paul Kettl said a survey after Sept. 11, 2001, in central Pennsylvania showed there was a 4 percent rise in demand for mental health services, whether drugs or consultations.

"The closer you are to the event, the greater the increase. Those with any kind of psychiatric disorder are likely to see that worsen," Kettl said.

How long lasting might be the psychological effects of the sniper attacks? Kettl said if the perpetrator turned out to be a psychotic or lone actor, people would recover quickly. If it transpired that he was connected to an organization like al Qaeda, people would feel more threatened.

William Waugh, a public administration professor at Georgia State University and author of the book "Living with Hazards, Dealing with Disasters," said Americans were unused to coping with the kind of threat posed by the sniper.

"I don't know if people have a realistic handle on the size of the threat or how vulnerable they actually are. I don't think many are taking seriously the threat posed by al Qaeda, especially outside of Washington and New York," he said.

That chimed with Schiraldi's observation that many in the Washington area had told him they were more frightened and unnerved by the sniper than they had been on Sept. 11.

Meanwhile, those living with the daily reality of the sniper are arguing about how much to change their lives.

Parents of students at one high school in Bethesda, Maryland, held a heated e-mail debate on Tuesday and Wednesday after the local county said it would not reschedule sports matches canceled because of the sniper threat.

One correspondent wrote: "Now is the time to stop allowing this maniac to ruin our lives. How long are we going to keep our kids inside? Two weeks? Two months? A year? Let's take a stand now and declare that we won't let this situation change our lives."

But another disagreed. "Could any of us live with ourselves if we pushed to reactivate these games, before this creep is apprehended, only to have one of our own fall victim? I don't think so. This is not running scared or giving in. It is common sense," she wrote.