Science / Medicine : Disaster at Holiday Season Always a Painful Reminder

Trauma counselors say the effects from a tragedy like the recent mass slaying of 14 women at the University of Montreal may trouble students, families and rescue workers for years, especially since the random massacre will forever be linked to the holiday season.

“The reactions to violence are always much more intense,” said Dr. Susan Solomon, director of the emergency disaster research program at the National Institute of Mental Health. “Intentional killings are always the hardest for people to come to grips with because of the senselessness of it.

“The Montreal killings have got to be very devastating to people and especially traumatic to other women (at the college) who will wonder why they survived. Their world has been shattered, and the environment that they considered safe no longer is. People always attempt to find order in the universe, but an event like that shatters their images of justice and safety.”