For her Zócalo Sketchbook, Steinsnyder presents a series of digital paintings of her favorite house plants. “During the early days of the pandemic when I often wasn’t venturing outside, I cultivated a deep connection with my plants,” she explains. “They functioned as an outlet to nature and caring for them became a way to channel my anxiety.” The resulting stylized, hyper-real illustrations create an almost hallucinatory effect; presented in isolation, each plant breathes in our anxiety and transforms it into much needed tranquility.

The post The Great Digital Indoors appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

But my experience of this generation, as a college professor of environmental studies, centers on another salient quality: Young people aren’t just motivated by climate change, they are downright traumatized by it. They are freaked out about the future of our planet, with a sense of urgency most of the rest of us haven’t been able to muster. This has profound political implications: Young people like my students are committed to making our world a better place. It’s my job, I’ve begun to think, to make sure that people in this “climate generation” don’t get swallowed up in an ocean of despair along the way.

The Gen Z students I am teaching now are different from those I’ve taught for 12 years. The students who used to choose environmental studies as a major, even as recently as five years ago, were often white outdoorsy types, idealistic, and eager to righteously educate the masses about how to recycle better, ride bikes more, eat locally, and reduce the impact of their lifestyles on the planet. They wanted to get away from the messiness of society and saw “humanity” as destroying nature.

By contrast, my Generation Z students care a lot more about humans. They flock to environmental studies out of a desire to reconcile humanity’s relationship with nature, an awareness that humanity and nature are deeply interconnected, and a genuine love for both. They are increasingly first-generation, non-white, and motivated to solve their communities’ problems by addressing the unequal distribution of environmental costs and benefits to people of color. They work with the Movement for Black Lives, Indigenous sovereignty groups fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline, and organizations that dismantle barriers to green space, such as Latino Outdoors. Unlike my students from earlier days of teaching, this generation isn’t choosing environmental studies to escape humanity; on the contrary, they get that the key to saving the environment is humanity.

It’s a vision of wholeness and hope—but it comes with a dark side. Digging into environmental studies introduces young people to the myriad ways that our interconnectedness in the world leads to all kinds of problems. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports predict that climate change and habitat destruction will increase the spread of infectious disease; climate also exacerbates health disparities between white and African American people in the U.S., including Black women’s pregnancy risks. Studying these sources makes it clear that the devastations of climate change will be borne unequally.

Some of my students become so overwhelmed with despair and grief about it all that they shut down. Youth have historically been the least likely to vote; but I’ve also seen many stop coming to lectures and seminars. They send depressed, despairing emails. They lose their bearings, question their relationships and education, and get so overwhelmed by a sense of powerlessness that they barely pass their classes. One of my students became so self-loathing that she came to think the only way to serve the planet was to stop consuming entirely: reducing her environmental impact meant starving herself. Most young people I know have already decided not to have children, because they don’t want their kids growing up on a doomed planet. They barely want to be alive themselves. They often seem on the brink of nihilism before we even cover the syllabus.

The young people I am teaching say they will bear the worst consequences of processes they did not initiate, and over which they have little or no control. They speak of an apocalypse on the horizon. My students say they do not expect to enjoy the experiences older adults take for granted—having children, planning a career, retiring. For many youth, climate disruption isn’t a hypothetical future possibility; it is already here. They read the long predicted increases in extreme weather events, wildfires, sea level rise, habitat destruction, worsening health outcomes related to pollution, and infectious disease as clear signs that their worst fears will be realized not just in their lifetime, but right now.

This sense of doom is more widely felt, beyond college classrooms. Psychologists and environmental scholars are coming up with a whole new vocabulary to describe these feelings of despair, including solastalgia, climate anxiety, eco-grief, pre-traumatic stress, and psychoterratic illness.

Whatever one calls it, all of this uncertainty can immobilize young people when they feel they can do nothing to fix it. Their sense of powerlessness, whether real or imagined, is at the root of their despair. I have found that many young people have limited notions of how power works. My students associate “power” with really bad things, like fascism, authoritarianism, or force; or slightly less bad things like celebrity, political power, or wealth. They have little imagination about how to engage in social change, and even less imagination about the alternative world they would build if they could.

Without a sense of efficacy—the feeling of having control over the conditions of their lives—I fear some may give up on the difficult process of making change without even trying. Psychologists call this misleading feeling of helplessness the “pseudoinefficacy effect,” and it has a political dimension that may keep individuals from working to help others. This feeling may also sync up with Americans’ recent cultural and economic history of seeing ourselves as consumers. Some scholars have argued that limiting our ability to imagine ourselves as having agency beyond being consumers has resulted in the “privatization of the imagination.” The combination of the feeling of misplaced despair and the feeling that they can only make changes through lifestyle choices creates a sort of ideological box that blocks real democratic political change.

Meanwhile, there is very little in the mass media to suggest that young people have real power over changes in the climate at large—or even our political system. The 24/7 news cycle thrives when it portrays a world on fire. And mainstream media offers few stories about solutions or models for alternative, regenerative economies. The stories that are covered often only tackle technological or market solutions that have yet to be invented or produced. By portraying climate change as a problem that is too big to fix, and suggesting that the contributions of any single individual are too small to make a difference, these messages leave young people with little sense of what can be done. Amid the clamor of apocalyptic coverage, few are talking about what it would take to thrive in, instead of fear, a climate-changed future.

We cannot afford for the next generation of climate justice leaders’ dread to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Their psychological resources of resilience, imagination, efficacy, and, against all odds, their fierce capacity for joy, are just as necessary for the future of a viable planet as natural resources like clean air and water. Activists and teachers of my generation must help Gen Z learn to push on the levers of technical, political, cultural, and economic change, and to draw on existential tools or “deep adaptation” in times of crisis.

There’s hope in the images on the streets and on social media: Today’s protests against police brutality are a testament to young people’s power and evidence of their commitment to their future. It isn’t an especially large leap from fighting a racist justice system to improving the planet; indeed, many in this generation see them as inextricably connected—that’s the point. And the rapid and radical changes that society has undertaken in response to COVID-19 is further evidence that change is possible. Humans can sacrifice and make collective changes to protect others—hopefully, in these difficult weeks, my students will be able to see that.

The trauma of being young in this historical moment will shape this generation in many ways. The rest of us have a lot to learn from them. And we would do well to help them see that their grief and despair are the other side of love and connection, and help them to channel that toward effective action. For their sake and that of the planet, we need them to feel empowered to shape and desire their future. They have superpowers unique to their generation. They are my antidote to despair.

The post The New Faces of Climate Justice appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Emotional support is the dog job of our times. For our long-ago ancestors, dogs may have performed other functions, such as co-hunting or pulling sledges, but now they are full-time furry mental health practitioners. As dogs offer us their grounding presence and help us weather the emotional storm of a global pandemic, we should reconsider what we owe them.

Now that we are keeping our human networks at arm’s length, our need for emotional closeness with our pets has increased. This is a boon for many homed dogs, because these steadfast companions are the ultimate anti-social distancers.

This inclination may be genetic. Scientists studying canine DNA have identified a gene for hyper-sociability; dogs are programmed for social closeness with humans, they need to be attached at the hip. Six feet, which is the new human definition of “personal space,” just doesn’t work for dogs. Being with us makes them calm and happy—just as being with them makes us calm and happy.

Our current solitude represents an opportunity to explore a certain one-sidedness in our social interactions with dogs. Why is “attention seeking” behavior in dogs—which is basically defined as them wanting our attention when we don’t feel like giving it to them—pathologized, with dogs sometimes punished and often medicated for it? Why do animal behaviorists advise us to ignore our dog’s advances?

I’m asking because now the shoe is on the other paw, and humans are suffering, in large numbers, from separation anxiety. We are separated from our friends, our social networks, and in many cases our parents or children. Maybe now we will get a taste of what millions of dogs are experiencing: the profound distress of being alone when we don’t want to be.

“Separation anxiety” is itself an example of the way we pathologize dogs’ behavior, which prevents us from understanding and empathizing with their experiences. A study published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science this January suggests that “separation anxiety” is not helpful clinically—because a diverse range of frustrations and distress experienced by dogs who are left alone too much are clumped under one vague label. Might we gain more sympathy for the canine set today, as we learn that our own experiences of social isolation are complex and multi-layered—and definitely uncomfortable?

We need the sympathy and safe companionship of dogs more now, as social distancing drives us into their furry paws. Those of us lucky enough to live with dogs already are reveling in more together time. The number of dogs being temporarily fostered has mushroomed over the past several weeks, as more and more people have been told to stay home. A New York Times story described how one animal shelter sent out a call for 200 foster placements and was surprised to receive 2000 applications.

This is wonderful and heartwarming. Yet I have some dark thoughts about it, too: Part of what is driving the fostering frenzy is the fact that people who work long hours away from the home and who have (rightfully, in my opinion) chosen not to have a dog are all of a sudden home all day. I fear that these dogs may get intensively loved on for a few weeks or months—until the virus does what it came to do. And then what? Many people who are fostering a dog while they are off work or working from home, who are “using” a dog for emotional comfort and social contact during this crisis, will have to return the dog to the shelter when all is said and done.

These people will have given dogs in need a beautiful gift by sharing their homes. But the sad thing is that the spark of hope and security that might be kindled in these open-hearted dogs will be dimmed when they must go back to the shelter. And although the home environment is, on average, going to be less stressful for a dog than the shelter environment, the transition from one to another can be very hard for dogs emotionally. Dogs shouldn’t be in shelters in the first place. When this is over we should do some collective soul-searching about a culture of dog ownership that leaves so many dogs adrift.

Even dogs who remain with their owners will struggle with adjustment when life returns to normal and people return to work. The rough consensus among trainers and dog advocates is that four hours alone is comfortable for most dogs, but long days home alone can compromise their welfare. Dogs’ frustration, anxiety, and loneliness can manifest in behaviors that, under non-covid19 circumstances, humans have labeled pathological. If the dogs remain in the home, separated from people and not getting enough attention, we may see an uptick in those so-called “behavior problems.”

Though this crisis is an opportunity for dogs to get more attention from humans, it is also a time of great risk for them. Reports out of China include heartbreaking details of dogs and cats who were abandoned during the lockdown and who are now starving to death. Here in the U.S., there already are reports of dogs being chained up outside, thrown out to the curb or being dropped off at shelters—all because of unfounded fears that the virus causing COVID-19 could sicken them. In truth, the giant packages of toilet paper that people are fighting over at the store are more likely vectors for the virus than a dog.

And this is just the initial wave. If past disasters and economic downturns are reasonable precedents, the numbers of dogs relinquished to the shelters or abandoned on street corners and rural highways after this crisis will swell.

Panic and upheaval can bring out the best in people as well as the worst. This is especially true in relation to our dogs. The crisis for dogs may look different and follow a different trajectory, but we need to be attentive to what it is like for them as well as for ourselves. The emotional ecosystem of dog and human is mutualistic and beneficial to both organisms. In times of crisis, they need us as much as we need them.

The post In Bad Times, Every Dog Is a ‘Very Good Dog’ appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

If I didn’t have my 3-year-old son, Kelvin, I would have no energy or motivation to get up in the morning: He knows that I am going to dress him, help him brush his teeth, feed him breakfast, and drive him to school. As hard as it is to continue with life and responsibilities while my dad is not with us, I try every day to be the best person I can be for my son and the rest of my family. Also I want to prove that my dad raised a strong, independent, responsible daughter. No matter what happens I will not give up. And under no circumstance will I let my family down.

Before my dad was detained, I would go to my parents’ house every morning before taking my son to school and my son would get a kiss and hug from his grandparents and I would get a hug and kiss from my parents. It was our way of starting our weekdays off right. My dad would give my son a blessing and my son would return it. When my son now asks “What about my blessing?” I say grandpa is sending him a blessing from his heart.

My dad has lived in L.A. for a little over 25 years. I am 24 years old. For most of my life I never thought of my dad as an immigrant. He was my dad: He worked hard (at a restaurant, from 3 p.m. to 3 a.m.), paid taxes, paid rent, raised kids, and had a happy life here. He was devoted to his kids, aiming to mold us into successful adults. He was at every practice, every game, every performance and parent conference.

Recently, he’d been helping my younger sisters train for the 26.2-mile L.A. marathon. On Saturday mornings he’d wake up at 5 a.m., after two hours’ sleep, and take the girls to train, running alongside them, or riding on his bike as they ran 20 miles.

That life ended on February 28 when my mom and dad were driving my two younger sisters to school around 7:20 a.m. They dropped off my 12-year-old sister Yuleni first. On their way to another school to drop off my 13-year-old sister Fatima, my dad noticed two vehicles following him. The cars turned on their flashing lights and pulled him over, and my dad noticed that their vests said ‘Police.’ My dad asked them, “What did I do wrong officer? Why are you pulling me over?” The man said, “Shut up, get out of the car, you have an order of deportation!” My dad was then arrested and put in handcuffs and in the back of the police car. Fatima started recording on her phone while sobbing hysterically. My mom was in shock. My dad told them “Don’t worry, be strong, get help.”

My sister called me while I was pulling into the parking lot at work. She was crying and said they’d taken Dad. I said “What! Who?” She said “the police, but Dad says they’re ICE.” I told my supervisor that I had to go, and I picked up my sister Jocelyn, who’s 20 and works in the same company as I do.

I don’t remember the drive. I was crying and had so much adrenaline going that I felt strangely numb. Once I got to the location where they had stopped my family, my dad already had been taken away. My mom and sister were sitting in the car crying. I ran to them and we all hugged tightly and cried. My mom said the police gave her a card with a number on it and told her to call in two hours because he had to get processed first. When we called they told us my dad was in the basement of the 300 North Los Angeles Street building waiting to be deported.

My sister Jocelyn and I went to go see him immediately. The officers were rude. My dad was wearing his street clothes and crying. I realized he was scared. He almost never cries; he prefers to keep strong for anything that might happen. He said he was in a room with a bunch of other guys and heard they would be deported in two hours. I could not handle that; I burst into tears. We told my dad we were going to get help. We didn’t want to leave him but we knew we had to take action fast.

Meanwhile my other two younger sisters and mom were at the school they attend, Academia Avance, where a team was gathering to find a solution and a lawyer. The team started making phone calls to the city council, mayor, and other contacts to try and stop my dad’s deportation.

We all decided to go down to the detention center on Los Angeles Street and stop the bus if they tried deporting him. We went and we blocked the exit and we were waiting, praying, crying, and hoping. We saw a group of guys that were being escorted to a big van behind the fence that we were blocking. I desperately looked closely to see if any of those men were my dad. I saw them all looking out with sad faces, but my dad was not in that group.

The we got a phone call from the legal team saying my dad’s deportation had been stopped temporarily. My dad called us from the detention center and we gave him the news. It was bittersweet. I felt relief knowing my dad was not being deported, but anxiety at not knowing any more than that. That night we couldn’t sleep.

The next day we found out he had been transferred to a detention center in Adelanto, about 100 miles away from Los Angeles. We also learned more about the government’s reasons for picking him up.

Rómulo Avelica with his two younger daughters. Photo courtesy of the Avelica family.

My family and I never thought that such minor issues would put him at risk. And for all the cases we saw on television of people getting detained and deported, it never seemed like something we would go through. Since he wasn’t a criminal or a bad person, how could he ever be considered a priority for deportation? He was an immigrant, and nobody in our neighborhood or friends distinguished between immigrants and legal or illegal: We considered ourselves regular, hard-working people.

We’d been sheltered from the reality of deportation. Our family didn’t know anyone who had been through the process of deportation, so we didn’t know what to do in case this happened to us.

This terrible process has brought realizations: We have come to understand just how profoundly my dad had dedicated his life to us and our wellbeing, and just how dependent we are on him. If they actually remove him, the government will be taking away our life, our happiness, and our wellbeing.

I also realized something about being American. Before this, being an American meant being like my dad: a “good citizen” of our community. Work hard, take care of your kids, pay taxes, pay rent, help your neighbors. But the rules around immigration don’t recognize good citizenship. And they don’t recognize how immigrants are a blessing that make this country diverse and strong. Instead, they are a series of requirements for legal entrance that are so high that many people end up living like Americans, without the legal status.

The problem is that legal citizenship matters more than good citizenship. Should a paper determine your worth as a person? It is your actions, personality, hard work, dedication, and kindness along with other qualities that determine your worth. That’s why my dad taught us. If the American immigration system is going to be great again, it needs to learn that lesson too.

The video my sister Fatima made of the ICE officers taking my dad while she sobbed went viral on the internet. When I first watched it I cried—it broke my heart. When it started to get played on the news it just made us feel down. Eventually, we started turning off the news whenever they played it.

But my feelings about it changed when I realized that people from other countries were sharing it. I think the video spoke to the universal language of compassion—people could really see and feel what it was like to go through what we had gone through.

It’s a long drive to see my dad at Adelanto Detention Center. We are always happy to see him in person but feel sad seeing him in a prisoner’s uniform, skinnier and miserable. Sometimes we can tell he has been crying. He says that each of our hugs and kisses made him stronger. During the first visit, when my dad wasn’t looking and we were walking away after saying goodbye, I broke down in tears. It was the worst drive back, because we were all crying. He has been in there for approximately five months now. Patience is the hardest thing to have in a situation like this.

These months have been emotionally draining and exhausting. A major struggle for my family has been financial stability. My dad was the backbone of this household. Now me and my sister Jocelyn are pitching in to help my mother and two younger sisters stay in their home.

In other ways, my dad’s situation has expanded our horizons. My siblings and I are aiming higher; our dreams have grown. We talk more now about enhancing our education so that our voices are heard and acknowledged. One of my younger sisters, Fatima, now wants to be an immigration lawyer. My other younger sister Yuleni wants to become a marine biologist. Jocelyn is continuing her schooling with the goal of becoming a teacher. I’m planning to increase my training and become a registered nurse.

As my son gets older, I will tell him what we went through and how it molded us to be stronger. I want him to be a successful adult one day, and will tell him that anything is possible with education. Our parents raised us to be proud U.S citizens and we remain proud, despite the detention of my father. We want to contribute in the success of this country and we will, together.

On June 8 my sister Fatima finished middle school. It was extremely hard to prepare for this day knowing that our dad wouldn’t be there. This was the first graduation of any of his children that he has missed. He told us to “do everything I would do, clap loud, scream when she is called on stage, buy her balloons and flowers, and make sure to tell her how proud we all are in this accomplishment.” We followed his instructions.

During the ceremony my dad called at the perfect time, when Fatima was receiving an award from the L.A. city council office for being a voice for kids who have immigrant parents. My dad heard the clapping and cheering. They shared that moment together and even though he was 100 miles away and on the phone, we felt his presence. My mom made pozole for dinner that day and our aunt and cousins came over and celebrated. It was a good day.

The post While ICE Tries to Deport My Father, My Family Stays Strong appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

at night I would hear the steel walls
rasp the wind at night she would
unscrew all the light bulbs with her oven mitts
while we slept the closets yawned tendrils
of jet fuel and by 13 I was addicted
to plowing the clouds of my dreams
mute as a screaming airliner

when we talk now my voice is pitched
like the hydraulic whirr of the landing gear
unfolding she reminds me of how many teeth
our old dog had I compare my window view
of the underwing city to embers in a dying fire

when I tell her I am pretending to see
an astronaut above me his suit and umbilical
white as a hot filament she finally cries
and I beg her pardon

The post When My Father Died appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

She is telling me this because I am her primary care doctor. As part of a routine check-up, I want to know if her arthritis is affecting her daily life. When patients become socially withdrawn, their health deteriorates further. She wants a reality check. Her arthritis never limited her but, she asks, should she avoid these places, be this afraid of terrorism, even if it’s affecting her health and happiness?

Anna is an example of the ‘‘terrorism burden”: the adverse health effects—ranging from loss of well-being or security to injury, illness, or death—caused by terrorism and national terrorism policies.

Terrorism causes public fear by definition and by intent. Our response to terrorism can harm our health, too. Watching the unrelenting replays of the September 11 attacks on television worsened psychological distress and even increased the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder. After every terrorist attack, pediatricians warn parents to limit their child’s exposure to television news on the topic.

But beyond what’s clinically diagnosed, our counterterrorism policies can also create other unintended psychological harm. And it is the most vulnerable people among us who feel these effects most deeply.

After September 11, 2001, the Department of Homeland Security ran its well-intentioned, color-coded system alerting the public to the risk of terrorist attack. For 10 years, the terror alert level remained at yellow, an elevated risk of attack. It’s not surprising that, a year after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, more than 10 percent of Americans were still changing their behaviors from fear of terrorism—limiting their outside activities, use of public transportation, and attendance at public events. The constant reminder about the threat of terrorism impaired our sense of security, a critical part of one’s overall health.

Unremitting warnings of terrorism harmed people from some walks of life more than others. Surveys found that persons with disabilities were more anxious about their personal risk from terrorism than were persons without disabilities. One survey that my research team worked on in 2004, three years after September 11, found that having a physical disability increased the likelihood among Los Angeles residents of frequently avoiding activities from fear of terrorism. The study also found that, compared to non-Latino whites, African-Americans were eight times more likely to frequently avoid activities from fear of terrorism; Latinos were seven times more likely.

We looked for reasons to explain this disparity. Could differences in the prevalence of psychological anxiety lead to different reactions? Or might lower educational attainment make it harder to understand the real risk, thereby leading some people to overreact? Nope. Our results did not change after statistically accounting for differences in education, income, anxiety level, immigration status, and other factors. Other researchers have found similar results across America.

Psychological theories such as R.W. Rogers’ protection motivation theory and Kim Witte’s extended parallel process model may explain our results. According to these theories, people will change their behaviors to protect themselves and reduce their fears based on their appraisals of both the threat and their abilities to cope with the threat. The threat appraisal includes perceptions of the probability of harm. The coping appraisal assesses their perceived self-efficacy to cope with an attack.

These theories help me understand my patient Anna’s avoidance behavior. Anna is less able to protect herself in a terrorist attack, like the attack in San Bernardino, because she can’t run away or hide as easily as someone without a mobility impairment. No matter how well prepared she is for any disaster, she faces greater risk of harm for this reason. Terror alerts may be nationwide, but people assess their vulnerability to terrorism and disasters—and their ability to recover—on a very personal level. Then they adapt their behaviors to protect themselves from harm and to reduce their fears. One possible reason minority groups take measures to avoid terrorism is they may not trust they will be treated equally after a disaster, as in Hurricane Katrina.

Of course, trying to protect yourself from harm is a good thing. But avoiding going to a restaurant with your friends is not the best way to do this. When people feel at risk, they may make bad choices or make good choices. It’s a bad choice to stay at home all the time, but a good choice to learn how to protect yourself in the event of a disaster or mass shooting. In my research, the same vulnerable groups who are avoiding public places after a terrorist attack are also buying emergency supplies and making disaster plans immediately after disasters and terrorist events. People who believe they are particularly vulnerable to a risk are motivated to reduce it. We should be guiding people to the right choices.

I am tempted to reassure Anna that her risk of meeting a terrorist is vanishingly small, but I know this won’t really help her. It could make her feel unheard. What I can do is recommend actions, in detail, that will actually reduce her risk in a risky world. This is one of the first lessons of what is called risk communications—the study of how we should communicate about risk in ways that promote healthy responses.

She should talk with a close colleague at work to enlist her help should she need to evacuate quickly. She should watch the online videos giving detailed instructions about “Run, Hide, Fight” with a particular focus on the details in the Hide and Run parts. (This is the approach recommended by the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies, based on a small body of research showing that immediate evacuation can save lives. It is also controversial. But having a plan and training may be better than inaction.) Anna can view the video and decide if it will work for her. I recommend the Ready Houston video on YouTube, despite the terror of watching it.

She should ask her boss to make a company-wide drill out of these recommendations, or at least practice it herself in her head—to “train your brain” as Amanda Ripley suggests in her excellent book, The Unthinkable. And she should keep at least a week’s worth of water, food, and her prescription medicines for the inevitable earthquake. As her doctor, I can give her detailed directions about how to get an extra week’s worth of medicine, which is only allowed by her health insurance plan if she makes the requests in the right way.

The recent terrorist attacks are an opportunity to improve our preparedness for emergencies and disasters. Let’s not miss this opportunity. For all the media attention to the San Bernardino attacks, I have not seen anything on how to promote our safety and well-being in the practical ways I describe.

All businesses should actively drill “Run, Hide, Fight.” I like Ripley’s idea of encouraging participation in drills by having the official meeting spot be a coffee shop on the next block where the boss buys everyone a coffee. Other doctors and pharmacists can proactively advise patients on getting and storing a week’s worth of medicine for disasters. Rather than using these attacks as moments to remind ourselves what we should be scared of, we can make these events teachable moments that build a greater culture of preparedness across the nation.

The post Obsessing About Terrorism Is Bad for Your Mental Health appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.