He knew that soldiers returning from active combat suffered from PTSD, but he'd never heard of a conflict reporter suffering similar symptoms. He asked his research team to compile studies that might provide precedents, but they came back empty-handed.
They told me there was nothing published on the topic," Feinstein recalled "I didn't believe them. Because in medicine there is always something that comes before you."
But the University of Toronto's medical library did not have a single study on the subject. Feinstein was baffled: there was extensive scientific data on firefighters, police officers, soldiers, and victims of sexual assault, but a void when it came to reporters.
COMMENT
Psychiatrist Anthony Feinstein is looking for studies that link war journalism to PTSD. The search turns up a void which guides his research into "moral injury" caused by witnessing a situation where people are in trouble and failing to help. It seems like a failure when there is nothing the library because patrons want to find an answer, but librarians know that a gap in research is also an opportunity for a PhD or scholarly publication. The trick is to be good enough at searching to feel confident that the knowledge gap is real and not an artifact of sloppy information research.
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