‘I’m laughing and joking,because if not,I would be crying’: Exploring the impact of terrorist attacks on direct victims

Abstract

Prior studies examining victims of terrorist attacks often focus on clinical outcomes, on vicarious victims, survey a broad area that was impacted by a terrorist attack, or only focus on one terrorist attack event. Findings from these studies indicate that victims are often impacted psychologically and behaviorally. While much has been gained from this research to support victims in the aftermath of a terrorist attack, there is limited research on the overall impact on individuals from different types of attacks, in varied locations, and if there are commonalities to individual impacts from terrorism attacks more broadly across victims. To bridge this gap, the current study uses qualitative data from in-depth life history narrative interviews with 22 terrorist attack victims from an international sample of attacks to explore the impact of this specific form of victimization. In doing so, we begin teasing out commonalities and differences of the impact of victimization from seemingly unrelated backgrounds. The findings have implications for policy for victims of terrorist attacks domestically and internationally.