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Our study of FMD and other disasters has led us to consider how trauma, and in particular, the relationship between traumatic experience and the diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has come to be understood in such a context. Traumatic stress is perhaps better represented as the "normal" reactions of those people exposed to an abnormal disaster event (Yehuda et al., 1998; Alexander & Wells, 1991). As Secor-Turner & O"Boyle (2006) indicate, most people who experience a traumatic event will experience feelings of fear, sorrow, uncertainty, and anger; these feelings are usually self-limiting and last three to six months. Our frequent interactions with those affected by the FMD disaster have led us to develop a situated definition of trauma. In 2001 traumatic experience was widespread and both acute and chronic, and people have reported feelings of shock, depression, including thoughts of suicide; loss of concentration and interest and recurrent thoughts and flashbacks. However while some of these feelings and affective disruptions remain, and perceptions of normality might be changed in the long term, we want to argue, along with Erikson, that this is what people who have survived disaster share, but it does not mean that they are sick. Survivors may be marked (stigmatized) by what has happened, but what helps is to find ways to understand and connect with this traumatic experience, rather than to separate it from wider society, to classify this as abnormal or "other".

DOI: 10.1057/9780230227613_6

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