Psychological Impact of War Affects Home Front : Emotions: Steady flow of news intensifies feelings. Fallout ranges from anxiety and guilt to depression.

While the war’s psychological impact on relatives of Americans sent to the battlefront is obvious and well-documented--a time of apprehension and dread--it also has worked in numerous, more subtle ways on the minds of Americans whose connection to the conflict is less direct.

Never before has the American public been so steadily bombarded with immediate news of a war. The constant images of people clumsily donning gas masks or running for cover from bombs serves as unflinching reminder of potential death and destruction. Consequently, the psychological repercussions of this war, even in its early days, threaten to extend deeper and wider than ever before.

“In Vietnam, you saw it on the nightly news. But this is every day, every (hour),” said sociologist John Sibley Butler of the University of Texas at Austin. “It’s put constantly on your mind. . . . That’s got to have an impact.”

With war comes uncertainty. Some people experience feelings of impotence and helplessness, their ability to have complete control over their destiny challenged. With uncertainty come rumors and fears: A college-age San Francisco man prepares his passport for a draft-evading trip to Canada; a Los Angeles construction contractor delays purchase of large equipment--while other Americans go on binges; a UCLA professor has second thoughts about retirement.

Emotional fallout has ranged from simple uneasiness and anxiety to a more accented hysteria. Travelers postpone flights because of fear of terrorism, while New Yorkers are purchasing gas masks faster than suppliers can stock them. Some people have said they feel guilty at enjoying life’s normal activities, such as going out to dinner or to a movie, as the world slides deeper into war.

“All of us are facing increasing peril,” said Dr. Roderic Gorney, professor of psychiatry at UCLA. “The sense of being helpless is the worst kind of stress in the face of peril.”

A saturation point already has been passed by some Americans, according to psychologists interviewed for this story. Numbed and overwhelmed, these people have grown weary of the nonstop reportage from the war and tuned out.

Others, understandably, have become depressed by the news: They experience a nagging sense of dread that seems to weigh down on them, distracting them from work or school and spawning other emotions such as guilt or confusion. Some counselors already have reported patients with physical reactions to stress, including insomnia, crying spells, frequency of urination, indigestion and shaking.

“People get really scared when they don’t know what’s going to come next,” said Amy Weingarten, a psychotherapist who practices in Tarzana. “Even though we really never know what’s coming next, (with war) there’s a bigger threat.”

Weingarten has considered canceling a trip to New York because of concern about terrorism.

For Sally Fairfax, a teacher in Berkeley, it was not fear of a terrorist’s bomb that prompted her to cancel a flight this month to Mexico. Echoing a sensation expressed by many people, she simply wanted to stick to familiar surroundings. There was security at home.

“To me, it felt like the earthquake” that hit the Bay Area on Oct. 17, 1989, she said. “I just didn’t want to be away from home. I just wanted to be where I belonged. With everything so cattywampus, I wanted to be where I could talk to people I knew.”

Such reactions can be especially strong for immigrants who have come to the United States from countries torn by war. Since the war’s outset, there have been reports of immigrants hoarding rice and other staples. A man from Honduras said he has been stockpiling bottled war because he knows Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons.

Children and Vietnam veterans also will be exceptionally impressionable, said mental health experts. In some cases, vets have flashbacks. Children are having nightmares and often reflect the anxieties of their parents.

“If those parents are very anxious, very stressed about . . . war, that anxiety will be transmitted to their children,” said Dr. William Arroyo, psychiatrist at County-USC Medical Center. “If you have parents losing it totally, you are going to have kids who are going to feel very similarly.”

Therapists said the best relief for war-related anxieties is to take action--whether it is by joining a peace demonstration or baking cookies for the troops.

During World War II, homebound Americans regularly kept lookout for enemy fighter planes, and doused lights in their homes at night. Children were instructed to collect fat and tin cans, while older folks made bandages or stitched uniforms. It was all part of the war effort, actions that united and galvanized the American public. The psychological benefits in many instances far outweighed practical returns.

Today, elementary and high schools across the country offer counseling sessions for children. Fred Rogers, of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” has taped public service announcements to reassure youngsters and encourage them to express their feelings. Adults can attend a number of “coping with war” seminars offered by hospitals and employers. Scores of telephone hot lines and support groups have been established in cities everywhere.

In California and the Southwest, the war has produced an extraordinary emotional effect on the region’s sizable immigrant communities. The response may seem exaggerated in this country, but it is often rooted in very real past experience.

Candida Trujillo, a Los Angeles housewife, is hoarding food for her four daughters. War, the Guatemalan native figures, could somehow interrupt food supplies, or at least drive prices up.

“I went to the Price Club,” Trujillo, 39, said, “and spent $150 on rice, beans, eggs, oil, sugar and salt.”

Gabriel Gutierrez, 28, said he bought three huge bottles of water. “They are going to use chemical weapons, so it’s good to have water and food,” said Gutierrez, a native of La Ceiba, Honduras.

In some border towns, war fears fueled a run on banks among depositors acting on a rumor that accounts held by foreigners would be frozen. Mexican parents took their children out of school after hearing a rumor that the war would close the U.S.-Mexico border to stop Iraqi terrorists from entering the country.

“The parents (in Mexico) wanted to have their children with them in case something happened,” said Sister Luisa Sanchez, principal of Tucson’s private Immaculate Heart Academy, a boarding school where several children were removed.

In many Los Angeles neighborhoods, fears that the draft will be revived has struck terror in the hearts of many a young man. This was compounded among many immigrants who, with limited English skills, were shocked to receive routine Selective Service registration notices: They thought they were being drafted.

“If I come to this country, it was to get away from war,” said Salvadoran native Jose Valdez, 24, his eyebrows knitted as he gestured plaintively with his hand. “I am not worried to die, but I think about my family.”

In fact, notices are sent to all male residents of a certain age and are not supposed to be a precursor to the draft.

The fear of being drafted, of course, is not limited to immigrants.

An 18-year-old freshman at San Francisco State University said he and several friends decided to ready their passports with the intention of fleeing to Canada if a draft is enacted.

For veterans of this country’s last war, fighting in the Persian Gulf has unleashed a flood of often contradictory emotions and psychological responses. At the Vet Center in Santa Barbara, a counseling facility that specializes in Vietnam veterans with post-traumatic syndrome, the waiting room was packed the day after war began. Talkative, fidgety men streamed in constantly in search of someone with whom to share their feelings.

The permanent psychological imprint left on the American public will depend on how the war goes, and how long it lasts.

If it is a short war, some sociologists and analysts suggest, Americans may feel boosted and buoyed. If it becomes a protracted struggle of many months, the country as a whole will be forced to question its military strength. Divisive racial tensions, lawlessness and domestic unrest could begin to tear at the nation’s seams.

“If it is a somber war . . . with a somber ending, the country will get very demoralized,” military sociologist Charles Moskos of Northwestern University said. “There would be great questioning of America’s internal worth.

“As a nation, we would go through a nervous breakdown.”