How does stress affect school safety?
Stress, particularly traumatic stress can affect school safety and it's important to know that someone is experiencing traumatic stress may have symptoms of, feeling fatigue or may have insomnia, they're not sleeping, they may articulate, their stress, “I'm feeling very stressed” or they may say things like “I'm freaking out", other signs might be someone what we call having a spiritual reaction just asking, “Why would God put all these on me"? or questioning their faith or maybe a student going to a teacher saying “you know what, I'm feeling like I'm having butterflies in my stomach and they're not going away” or “I can't sleep at night” or “I'm falling asleep in class and I don't know why” things like that. A traumatic stress a person who is having traumatic stress reactions doesn't necessarily have to have gone through an event. They could have just seen it on television or have exposure by hearing about an event. So we've got to be careful in the classrooms and in the aftermath of especially how you publicize school shootings, we have to be careful about making sure that we're turning the television off and that we're not exposing especially young kids to the sights and images that may be on television after a traumatic event because traumatic stress reactions may be exhibited in students who the teachers may think, they haven't gone through anything but they may have seen it on television the night before at their parent's house.
