Winter 2001-2002
Patricia Frazier: Finding Hope in TRAGEDY
Photo by Diana Watters
PATRICIA FRAZIER
Education
Ph.D. 1988, U of Minnesota
M.A. 1984, U of Minnesota
B.A. 1979, St. Olaf, Northfield
Professional history
1990-present: faculty, psychology, U of Minnesota
1992-1993: staff psychologist, U of Minnesota
1988-1990: U of Missouri, Columbia
Selected honors & awards
Exemplary Paper Award, John Templeton Foundation, 1998
Early Career Scientist-Practitioner Award, Div. 17-American Psychological Association, 1996
Research grants from the U.S. Dept. of Justice, the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, and the National Institutes of Health
Selected Publications
"The Scientific Status of Research on Rape Trauma Syndrome." Modern Scientific Evidence: The Law and Science of Expert Testimony 1 (2000).
"The Use of Religious Coping During Stressful Life Events: Main Effects, Moderation, and Mediation." Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 66 (1998).
"Research on Gender and the Law: Where are We Going? Where Have We Been?" Law and Human Behavior 22 (1998).
"Sexual Assault Cases in the Legal System: Police,
Prosecutor, and Victim Perspectives." Law
and Human Behavior 20 (1996).
When Patricia Frazier heard the news on September 11, she reacted much as other Americans did-- with shock and grief. Better than most, though, she has an idea of what survivors of such a traumatic episode are experiencing as they attempt to cope in the aftermath.
Frazier, an associate professor of psychology, is an expert in the ways people cope with stressful life events. Much of her work has focused on the recovery process of rape victims, but in the wake of September's events, she has refocused her research to investigate the psychological impact of the attacks on students. "Sexual assaults and terrorist attacks are both traumatic, life-threatening events [that produce feelings of] fear, horror, and intense emotion," she explains-even in when the experience is vicarious.
"Post-traumatic stress disorder can occur following any kind of traumatic event."
Not unexpectedly, she finds, survivors of traumatic events are apt to find the world less safe and more unfair than they had believed it to be. But there are other, more unexpected, consequences as well. In her study of rape victims, Frazier has discovered that many survivors experience positive as well as negative personal changes as part of their recovery process. "Research shows that 50 to 60 percent of survivors of trauma report some kind of personal growth," she notes.
Survivors report feeling not only increased empathy toward others but also a sense of increased personal strength, growth in personal relationships, and a renewed spiritual life, says Frazier: "My research developed because traditionally psychology is focused on bad outcomes. After traumatic events, people are asked 'How has it affected you negatively?' But [the survivors] say that positive things come out of these episodes, too."
It's these measures of positive post-traumatic growth that Frazier and her students will be looking for when they survey University students, asking for their reactions to the September 11 attacks. They'll also be looking for changes-both positive and negative-unique to survivors of this particular experience.
"Everybody's feelings are affected [by a tragedy like September 11]," says Frazier. "We're interested in the extent to which different events lead to different changes"-including events experienced indirectly, through media such as television.
Negotiating post-traumatic recovery
In her interviews with students, Frazier also will focus on what factors of personality make a person genuinely able to experience growth as a result of trauma. In post-traumatic stress disorder, her research shows, people who say positive things immediately after an event are not always able to maintain that resiliency over time.
"We'll investigate whether people actually do change as a result of trauma, or that's just something they say immediately afterward."
Frazier also wants to investigate how people attempt to reassert control in the wake of an event over which they have been essentially powerless. "The theory is that uncontrollable events are the most traumatic," she says. From earlier research, she has learned that attempts to exert a kind of retrospective control over disaster by blaming oneself or second-guessing the chain of events are doomed to failure.
Compulsive mental reenactments of scenarios that begin "If only I hadn't..." can actually leave a victim less able to heal. Nor is it productive to believe that taking control of the future will prevent recurrences of the trauma. A better coping strategy, says Frazier, is for a victim to acknowledge that the event was beyond his or her control but ask how he or she can take control of the healing process. What's crucial for the survivor, she says, is "making the cognitive shift from something you could not control to something you can do now [to aid recovery]."
Throughout her career, Frazier has dedicated herself to studying people in aftermath of some of the worst, most vulnerable moments of their lives. When she reviewed for her dissertation the files of more than 1,400 Minneapolis-area women who had been sexually assaulted, she was so moved by the experience that, she says, "I could never again see movies with violence against women presented as entertainment."
But, she adds, she also has learned coping skills: "Observing the efforts of survivors of trauma has given me knowledge of how to deal more effectively [with difficulties]."
To be sure, Frazier's research is sobering. Yet it gives her the kind of insight that we all may need in increasing measure as events set in motion on September 11 unfold in the months ahead.