Psychological effects of terrorism on Pakistani society: A Study of PTSD of APS Peshawar Incident among School-going Children in Lahore

Dr. Bakht Rawan, Fiza Zia ul Hasnain, Dr. Shabir Hussain, Asmat Ullah1

Abstract

This paper investigates relationship between media, especially television
coverage of terrorist attacks and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among
the viewers of such media coverage. This is a case study of television coverage of
terrorist attack on Army Public School (APS) Peshawar, in which 132 children
and 10 staff members were killed and more than 121 children were injured. The
present study was designed to investigate that (1) whether exposure to television
content relating to the incident of attack on APS Peshawar has any relationship
with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among children viewers in other parts
of the country, (2) whether the extent of time spent in viewing content relating to
the incident of APS Peshawar has any differential effect on the post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD) among the children viewers, (3) to examine that whether
gender has any relationship with the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among
children viewers of television content relating to the incident of APS Peshawar
massacre, (4) to find out that whether the type of school children reading in has
any relationship with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among children
viewers of television content relating to the incident of Army Public School
Peshawar. The results indicate that majority of the children learnt about the APS
Peshawar terrorist attack through television however, generally television
footage of the incident did not cause PTSD among the respondents.