{"id":17173,"date":"2024-11-25T09:00:09","date_gmt":"2024-11-25T10:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=17173"},"modified":"2024-11-25T10:23:04","modified_gmt":"2024-11-25T10:23:04","slug":"in-air-emergencies-can-cause-lasting-trauma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=17173","title":{"rendered":"In-Air Emergencies Can Cause Lasting Trauma"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Extreme turbulence, a blown-out door, an engine on fire: For passengers and crew members who have experienced in-air emergencies, the pain endures.<\/p>\n

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Last January, Shandy Brewer boarded an Alaska Airlines flight<\/a> from Portland, Ore., to Ontario, Calif., en route to her grandmother\u2019s birthday celebration. She was seated in the 11th row, between her father and a stranger. Shortly after takeoff, Ms. Brewer and the other passengers heard a loud bang. She couldn\u2019t see that 15 rows behind her one of the plane\u2019s doors had blown off, exposing passengers to open air at 16,000 feet.<\/p>\n

Oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling, and passengers began to pray. She thought they were going to crash. As the plane made an emergency landing in Oregon, Ms. Brewer hugged her father with one arm and the stranger with the other, wishing she could record a video to say goodbye to her mother.<\/p>\n

Nearly 11 months on, the mental distress caused by less than 20 minutes of panic in the air is its own form of injury, said Ms. Brewer, now 30: \u201cPeople say, \u2018Nobody died on this flight\u2019 \u2014 but we could have.\u201d Ms. Brewer sees a therapist and practices breathing exercises, but she still has an occasional recurring nightmare about being on a helicopter without doors or a frame, clutching her seat to save herself from barreling into the sky. She\u2019s also set off by loud noises. On the Fourth of July, the sound of fireworks made her feel \u201cextreme panic,\u201d and she had to hide indoors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a cloud over me all the time reminding me that I could die at any second,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

When people discuss fears of flying, they\u2019re often reminded that planes are quite safe. According to a 2022 analysis<\/a> of commercial aviation safety conducted by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, \u201cThere has been a significant and sustained reduction in airline accidents in the United States over the past two decades.\u201d The analysis found that flight safety had \u201cimproved more than forty-fold.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But statistics matter little to a mind that can\u2019t stop replaying an upsetting event, especially when startling emergencies continue to make the news<\/a>. \u201cA lot of people develop significant anxiety after these incidents,\u201d said Rebecca B. Skolnick, a clinical psychologist and adjunct assistant clinical professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. \u201cIt becomes not just something that happened to them, but something that shapes the way they think about the world, and flying in particular,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Ms. Brewer and more than 30 other passengers from the Alaska Airlines flight are suing the carrier and Boeing, the aircraft manufacturer, citing \u201csevere stress, anxiety, trauma, physical pain, flashbacks and fear of flying and also objective physical manifestations such as sleeplessness, PTSD, hearing damage and other injuries.\u201d According to the lawsuit, one of the plaintiffs wrote a text to their mother, believing, like Ms. Brewer, that the plane was crashing: \u201cWe\u2019re in masks. I love you.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Extreme turbulence, a blown-out door, an engine on fire: For passengers and crew members who have experienced in-air emergencies, the pain endures.Last January, Shandy Brewer boarded an Alaska Airlines flight from Portland, Ore., to Ontario, Calif., en route to her grandmother\u2019s birthday celebration. She was seated in the 11th row, between her father and a stranger. Shortly after takeoff, Ms. Brewer and the other passengers heard a loud bang. She couldn\u2019t see that 15 rows behind her one of the plane\u2019s doors had blown off, exposing passengers to open air at 16,000 feet.Oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling, and passengers began to pray. She thought they were going to crash. As the plane made an emergency landing in Oregon, Ms. Brewer hugged her father with one arm and the stranger with the other, wishing she could record a video to say goodbye to her mother.Nearly 11 months on, the mental distress caused by less than 20 minutes of panic in the air is its own form of injury, said Ms. Brewer, now 30: \u201cPeople say, \u2018Nobody died on this flight\u2019 \u2014 but we could have.\u201d Ms. Brewer sees a therapist and practices breathing exercises, but she still has an occasional recurring nightmare about being on a helicopter without doors or a frame, clutching her seat to save herself from barreling into the sky. She\u2019s also set off by loud noises. On the Fourth of July, the sound of fireworks made her feel \u201cextreme panic,\u201d and she had to hide indoors.\u201cThere\u2019s a cloud over me all the time reminding me that I could die at any second,\u201d she said.When people discuss fears of flying, they\u2019re often reminded that planes are quite safe. According to a 2022 analysis of commercial aviation safety conducted by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, \u201cThere has been a significant and sustained reduction in airline accidents in the United States over the past two decades.\u201d The analysis found that flight safety had \u201cimproved more than forty-fold.\u201dBut statistics matter little to a mind that can\u2019t stop replaying an upsetting event, especially when startling emergencies continue to make the news. \u201cA lot of people develop significant anxiety after these incidents,\u201d said Rebecca B. Skolnick, a clinical psychologist and adjunct assistant clinical professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. \u201cIt becomes not just something that happened to them, but something that shapes the way they think about the world, and flying in particular,\u201d she said.Ms. Brewer and more than 30 other passengers from the Alaska Airlines flight are suing the carrier and Boeing, the aircraft manufacturer, citing \u201csevere stress, anxiety, trauma, physical pain, flashbacks and fear of flying and also objective physical manifestations such as sleeplessness, PTSD, hearing damage and other injuries.\u201d According to the lawsuit, one of the plaintiffs wrote a text to their mother, believing, like Ms. Brewer, that the plane was crashing: \u201cWe\u2019re in masks. I love you.\u201dWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17175,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17173"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17176,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17173\/revisions\/17176"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}