ISALC: ESL 382: Computer Applications - Fall 2000
Hatchet: Student Survival Guide


Re



Topic on Hatchet

Brian's Psychological Changes
Researched by Lorena Palma.
Writing checked by Ahmed Al-Muhairi.

This is what I knew about the psychological effects of disasters before reading Hatchet:

I knew that people who have had any kind of traumatic way of accident suffer from mental disorders or physical diseases. These could be severe or not, it depends on how the accident was.

I had never thought how much damage a disaster could cause in one person, how they would feel about it or how it could change their lives.

 

This is why Brian is changes were important in Hatchet:

The changes were important because the crash affected Brian physically as well as mentally. He took the plane thinking that everything was going to be fine, but in one moment his life changed. He had to learn how to survive in the forest, and that was not easy for a boy who had had a common life as the rest of the boys. Brian had to mature very quickly, and in a hard way. He had to find a way to stay alive. At the beginning he didn't know how he had to act, but step by step he learned that he had to be patient and to learn from the mistakes that he had made.

 

After reading Hatchet and completing my Internet research, this is what learned about consequences that a person can suffer after an accident:

People who have been victims of a disaster, such as an earthquake, a tornado, a flood, an airplane crash or a terrorist attack suffer from a lot of different kinds of negative consequences.

First, they suffer from a shock; sometimes they can't remember what happened, and they feel intense anxiety, or fear, or terror, their nerves go on alert, and their muscles are tense. When these feelings are dissipating, longer-term effects appear.

The second effects, long-term effects, involve important feelings like different beliefs that we have, as the belief in ourselves, and in other people. They sometimes feel helpless and hopeless. They may feel incapable of making decisions.

Other emotional effects can be hostility, anxiety, depression, chronic grief, suspiciousness, nightmares, and reliving the disaster. Emotional trauma appears usually only after some time, they can show the first symptoms even two years after the event.

Women and children (5-10 years old) are the most vulnerable to suffer some post traumatic disorders. Some post traumatic symptoms are depression, nervousness, disorientation, confusion, dependency, paranoia, sleep disturbances, anger, hostility, restlessness, memory loss, fatigue, change in menstrual cycle, loss of sexual desire, avoidance of thoughts about the disaster, avoidance of discussion about the disaster or topics related with it, slowness of thinking, suicidal attempts, self-destructive and impulsive behavior.

Today, psychiatrist, psychologists, and other mental health professionals have good success in treating the effects that disasters cause in people. These professionals use different kinds of treatment methods to help these people. Most of them focus their work on individual therapy, and some of them also recommend family therapy or to participate in discussion groups with people who have lived similar traumatic events. It is considered a good method, because they can share their own experiences, and they can talk about their experiences with people who feel like them. In some cases, anti depression medication is used too for helping to control the symptoms.

In Hatchet, Brian suffered from different kinds of negative consequences. He had dreams about the lake, he had no nightmares, but sometimes with some of his dreams he woke up with them. A physical consequence was that he lost seventeen percent of his body weight. He didn't have too many negatives consequences. In this same case, you could have other problems, but it depends upon the person.

Sources for this information:

 

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