What you see affects your mental health

Can what we see affect our mental health? Research shows that repeatedly watching graphic images of war and terrorism like 9/11 and the Iraq war significantly reduces mental and physical well-being (Silver et al., 2013).

The survey study of 1322 people found that watching news footage on the 9/11 terrorist attack for more than an hour per day during the first seven days after the attack increased post traumatic stress over three years after the attack.

Frequent viewing of vivid images of planes hitting buildings, buildings on fire, and people jumping from buildings also negatively affected their physical health two to three years after the attack. Frequent exposure to war related images like soldiers engaged in battle and dead soldiers significantly increased post traumatic stress.

We should clearly be aware of the psychological and physical impact of frequently watching images of war and terrorism. We should be very careful about what we see. Of course, we should not blind ourselves from the terrible events that happen in our life because it’s important to recognise, remember and to learn from them. But we can limit how long we are exposed to such terrible images and make sure that we do not watch war and terrorism related images for too long.

Literally speaking, our eyes are the lamp of the body that the positive things we see will light up the whole body, but the negative things we see will darken the whole body.

Silver, R. C., Holman, E. A., Andersen, J. P., Poulin, M., McIntosh, D. N., & Gil-Rivas, V. (2013). Mental-and physical-health effects of acute exposure to media images of the September 11, 2001, attacks and the Iraq War. Psychological Science, 24(9), 1623-1634.