NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS

In the past few years I have come across several people whose mental health has been affected by the news. This brought to mind an experience from my childhood in the 1970’s.

My father had a TV and electrical shop and I remember helping my father move a large television from the lounge into the bedroom of a local farmer who was recovering from a heart attack. Televisions were much heavier and deeper in depth than today and this was in a cabinet that added to the weight. In addition extra electric and aerial sockets had to be wired and installed.

About three days later we found ourselves having to carry the television back into the lounge. Once we had done that my father asked why we had to take the TV out of the bedroom. The farmer’s wife explained that it was doctor’s orders. As soon as the doctor visited him resting in bed he insisted that the |TV must be removed from the bedroom. The reason behind this was that the heart attack had been brought about by the news. The news bulletin had carried a story about an IRA bomb going off and a child had been killed. This so upset the farmer that he immediately had a heart attack.

In those days there were only three TV channels with news at set periods throughout the day on two of those channels. Nowadays we have 24 hour news channels and access to instant news on our phones. I think everyone today can understand the feelings that promoted the farmer’s heart attack as we see so much more today. For many this can have an accumulative effect of stress rather than an immediate life-threatening emergency; others become desensitized to the news.

What can people do about this? Certainly we cannot follow the Greek solution adopted by Tigranes of beheading the bringer of bad news for Clive Myrie and his colleagues may object.

I believe in general we are not built to take in constant bad news of suffering and cruelty and death. To be informed and care about others throughout the world is a fine attribute, but we have to understand our limits of compassion. This, in my view, is an essential filter for if you consider everything as important and painful you then need to consider that you are neither omniscient or omnipotent. You are human. As you encounter the vast array of news on social media, internet, TV or radio consider what information you need and what you have capacity to deal with emotionally and even physically.

If you are overwhelmed with news perhaps the best thing is to control consumption. To this goal I suggest  one of the best tools to use is the old fashioned newspaper. The newspaper has the advantage of not being as immediate as other media and by the time printed news is published it has had time to be percolated, filtered and properly interpreted. In this way you can absorb news of a better quality in a potentially less stressful manner.