How terror fears can make you sick
By Marc Siegel

Amid the first presidential election campaign since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, both candidates have been trying to convince the public that only they can keep us safe. But this tapping into today's fears for political purposes is perhaps even more dangerous than the terrorist acts themselves.

Nervous anticipation is creating emotional and physical wrecks among some of us who live in the big cities or obsessively watch the ever-alert cable TV news shows. President Bush has pounded Sen. John Kerry as being weak on terrorism and inconsistent on Iraq. Kerry has warned voters that a second Bush term could lead to another Vietnam while reminding us that Osama bin Laden is still a haunting threat.

Both candidates, via ads, speeches and the debates, are megaphoning their danger/safety messages via the media's hype apparatus. The message — be afraid — is getting out. A front-page headline in this newspaper last week pointed out that even the voting process is stirring fears: "Election warning causes anxiety."

Real impact: Your health

The collateral damage of these fears could be many Americans' health. We are on perpetual alert status, which stokes safety concerns. This process wears us down and interferes with our ability to function.

Of course, people in Little Rock or Albuquerque may not live under the same clouds of anxiety as those in New York, Washington or Los Angeles. But for millions on the coasts — and for the worrywarts in between — the threat of a terrorist attack is not a distant thought.

Fear traces its roots as a protective mechanism to the animal kingdom. The fear center of all animal brains, humans included, becomes activated in response to perceived danger signals. The body is thrown into a "fight or flight" mode. Unchecked, however, this stress creates far more heart disease, stroke and suicide victims than does terrorism.

In 2001, terrorists killed 2,978 people in the USA, including five from anthrax. That same year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

• Heart disease in this country killed 700,142.
• Cancer took 553,768 lives.
• Accidents killed 101,537.
• Suicide claimed 30,622 lives.

The number of children who died in infancy was 27,801, and their deaths were no less horrible or frightening for those involved than the 9/11 attacks.

But on a societal level, the effects of 9/11 are unmatched. And since those attacks, we tend to overpersonalize much of the information we receive regarding the terrorist threat. When the danger perceived is out of proportion to the real risk, the fear response becomes useless or even maladaptive.

Getting a grip on reality

Humans tend to generalize fear from specific warnings as well as non-specific ones. We live in a time of powerful information sources — info-bites, sound bites, techno-bites — that provide most, if not all, of our understanding. We try to interpret compressed information and apply it to our lives. The result is that we lose track of the real numbers, of the real danger, which is actually quite small.

We see the police checking trucks, and we believe that something is about to happen. Worse, we fully expect that if something does happen, it will happen to each and every one of us. Yet not one terrorist attack has occurred on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001.

Fear serves us best when it warns us about things that directly threaten us. We must learn to put risk into proper perspective for the sake of our health. If, instead, we remain at the ready, in fight-or-flight mode, revved up by each alert, it will literally make us sick.

Marc Siegel is a clinical associate professor at New York University. His book, False Alarm: Profiting From the Epidemic of Fear, will be published in spring 2005.

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Copyright © 1990-2007 Marc K. Siegel, M.D.