Terrorizing Attacks on Children by Psychotic Parents

Within the strategy of risk research, disaster is conceptualized as risk and situations are appraised in terms of their riskiness. Thus, with natural disasters, the site is chosen that is at high risk for floods, tornadoes, and earthquakes, and the sample of the population is evaluated with the expectation that they will be retested following the disaster. In this presentation, the calamity is man-made and the potential victims are the children of psychotic parents where the risk for developing psychosis in adult life is 10–15 times that found in the general population, but the risk of exposure to psychotic behavior is very much greater. Much of the earlier work on disaster appeared fixated on the horror of the situation so that controlled investigations seemed out of place (“statistics don't bleed!”). The research field is currently moving into a transitional phase intermediate between the anecdotal and the rigorous, but spanning both. Even aftermath research so far has not conclusively answered such questions as the similarities and differences between natural and man-made disasters in terms of the psychological response.