The children of Pam Comfurius (46) had been staying for a few days when Russia invaded Ukraine. She just had a few days off. And so the Amsterdam girl, who works in childcare, had plenty of time to follow the news. She turned on CNN, switched to it every now and then NOS News and scrolled through Twitter for hours.
During the first days of the war she spent about ten to twelve hours a day dealing with the situation in Ukraine. ‘I didn’t want to go to bed at night. It felt like I would let the Ukrainians down with that. The first thing I did in the morning was read the news. Is Zelensky still alive?’
After the pandemic, the war in Ukraine now dominates the news. Images of corona patients on a ventilator have given way to images of babies in air-raid shelters, destroyed apartment buildings and bodies on the street.
Those who want can fill days with viewing war scenes. This phenomenon is called ‘doom scrolling’: the excessive following of negative news. What does this do to our mental well-being? And why are some people awake to the war in Ukraine and others let the news slide more easily?
First and foremost: the experience of those who follow the war in Ukraine from a great distance in complete safety and freedom has no relation to the experience of the people who undergo the war: the soldiers at the front, the refugees, the people who remain behind. .
It is therefore with some trepidation that Comfurius wants to talk about what it did to her: following the situation in Ukraine for hours on end. ‘In the end I’ll be safe here, with a house, a job and enough money in the bank to pay the higher energy bill. It’s about the people there.’
She slept badly because of it. The tight band she felt around her head when she got corona earlier this year was back. ‘I felt sad and restless. The idea that in Russia there is a maniac, disconnected from reality, who has the red button at his disposal does something to my sense of security.’
The war keeps many Dutch busy
The feelings of Comfurius are not unique. Half (51 percent) of the Dutch are ‘very concerned’ about the war in Ukraine, recently revealed in a survey of research bureau I&O Research. Another 39 percent are ‘somewhat concerned’.
These concerns concern the suffering of the victims, but also the consequences for ourselves: the large flows of refugees coming here, rising gas prices and the threat of a Third World War.
The war keeps many Dutch people busy, according to the same study. About one in three respondents follows the situation in Ukraine closely and more than half follow the war in outline: together they account for almost 90 percent. By way of comparison: the municipal elections are closely or broadly followed by approximately 40 percent.
And that is not without consequences. Anyone who looks at war images a lot can experience this, says health psychologist Alison Holman, of the University of California. In recent years, she has done a lot of research into the well-being of Americans who followed attacks, disasters and wars through the media.
The same picture always emerges from these studies. ‘The more someone looks at images of an attack or disaster, the greater the chance of mental problems afterwards.’ For example, together with colleagues she investigated the mental impact of the 9/11 attacks on more than two thousand Americans, shortly after, but also three years later. Result: those who followed the news about the attacks for more than four hours a day in the weeks after September 11, 2001 were more likely to have complaints related to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) years later. In short, problems such as irritability, negative thoughts and sleep disorders.
Boston Marathon bombing
Even more remarkable is a comparable research after the Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people. “People who witnessed the attacks had fewer stress symptoms in the weeks that followed than those who watched media coverage for more than six hours a day.” How that comes about is still speculation, says Holman. ‘One of my theories is that explicit images on television were repeated over and over, so that people were exposed to it more often.’
The problem with this type of survey through questionnaires, ‘however robust’, says Holman, is that it cannot be said with certainty that the stress symptoms arise from viewing the images. ‘You don’t have a control group, it’s not a lab experiment. Brain research has been done on people who were shown explicit images. With them, you saw the part of the brain associated with PTSD light up the moment they saw the images. That also indicates that watching these kinds of images has a negative impact.’
Holman studied Americans who looked at the suffering of compatriots. What about the Dutch who follow the war in Ukraine? “It’s about the extent to which people identify with the victims they see in the images,” says the health psychologist. The greater the identification, the greater the effect. ‘That is of course different when it comes to people from another country. But these are Europeans, not the victims of, for example, the war in Yemen, for which there is hardly any media attention.’
‘I feel the threat’
Added to this is the threat of nuclear war. Holman: ‘I have not researched that, but I can well imagine that it also has something to do with people. I live in California, far from Russia, yet I feel the threat.’
It is also what the Amsterdam Pam Comfurius says. ‘It is now often about people feeling more sympathetic to the Ukrainian refugees than to the Syrian ones. That would be because those people are less like us. I also wondered: why didn’t the civil war in Syria keep me awake? Or the Israel-Palestine conflict? I also find those situations terrible.’ The difference, she thinks, is ‘absolutely not’ in the skin color of the people. “But in the fact that behind this war there is someone who seems crazy enough to start a nuclear war.”
What may also play a role in how the Dutch view the war in Ukraine is the pandemic that preceded it. What started as a news story in the back of the newspaper about a strange new virus in China, quickly turned into a crisis in which unprecedented measures such as school closures and a curfew suddenly became the order of the day.
‘On the one hand, you can learn from the pandemic that we are resilient as a country. We can handle such an unexpected disaster’, says Michel Dückers, professor by special appointment of crises, safety and health at the University of Groningen. ‘But it can also lead to greater uncertainty: something like this can just happen to us.’
extra vulnerable
Trauma psychologist Kaz de Jong distinguishes three groups that are extra vulnerable to news about disaster. In the first place, these are people who have family or friends who live in the disaster area. De Jong works at Doctors Without Borders, it is his job to keep colleagues who have been in a war or disaster area mentally going. “In this case, we keep a close eye on our people who have relatives in Ukraine or who have worked there.”
A second vulnerable group are people who have experienced something similar themselves, such as refugees and military personnel. Research by Holman also shows something similar, she says. ‘We see that people who have been exposed to violence before in their lives run a greater risk of developing stress complaints after watching images of wars and attacks.’
The third vulnerable group that De Jong distinguishes are the so-called ‘doom scrollers’. People who have no link with Ukraine, but who simply cannot or do not want to distance themselves enough from the news. De Jong: ‘Following a war can also be addictive in a way. It can give you the impression that you still have some control over the situation.’
‘Turn on the radio, instead of the television’
When Pam Comfurius noticed that she was starting to get bothered by the many hours she spent following the war, she intervened. ‘I thought: it’s no use to the people of Ukraine if I go overboard. Moreover: structural sleep deprivation does not make me a nicer mother or a better employee.’ And so she switched back from ten to twelve hours of news consumption a day to one to two hours. It functions. ‘I’m sleeping well now. Peace is back.’
It is also what all the experts mentioned in this piece strongly advise: dose the amount of news you take in.
‘Limit your news consumption to twenty or thirty minutes a few times a day,’ says American health psychologist Holman. You don’t have to bury your head in the sand. Make sure you stay informed, but then turn off the television.’ And above all: avoid explicit images. “If you come across a video that warns you about the content in advance, don’t watch it.”
Kaz de Jong of Doctors Without Borders advises colleagues who are burdened by the news to avoid images as much as possible at all. “Turn on the radio.” He also doses his news intake himself, especially in the evening. “It’s hard not to follow the war. But if I catch myself looking over and over, I put my phone away and listen to music. Or I’ll put on Netflix.’
And for those who are nevertheless struck by the gloom of war, the Groningen professor by special appointment Dückers has another tip. ‘Go and get some exercise. Or find friends. Being engaged in a meaningful way has been proven to help against anxiety and depression.’
Does it help to avoid news?
Some people avoid negative news after a while and become a little happier because of it. At least that can be deduced from a research that was held among a (representative) panel of twelve hundred Dutch people, just after the outbreak of the corona crisis. “We initially saw that most people started following more news when the corona crisis broke out,” says Kiki de Bruin, who is doing his PhD on news avoidance at the Hogeschool Utrecht and the University of Amsterdam.
‘In the months that followed, we saw that about half of the news about corona actually started to avoid it, partly because it had a negative effect on their mood.’ Because the panel members were asked each time how they felt, the researchers were able to see the effect. “The people who had avoided the news felt a little better. Even if we corrected for the possibility that people already felt better a few months after the start of the pandemic,” says De Bruin. She recognizes it from her interview with news avoiders for another investigation. “They also say it helps them.”