Collective and Individual Consciousness in Testimonies of Navy Divers

Sick Israeli Navy divers, who were exposed to chemical sewage during their army service, suspected that this exposure was the cause of their cancer. The divers appealed to the courts and demanded the establishment of an independent committee for the investigation of this issue. This step created strong emotional tension between the sick divers and their former brothers-in-arms from the navy. The aim of this paper is to describe the process by which the tension between the divers' individual and collective consciousness is discursively elaborated in their testimony to the committee. This testimony is described by means of a Bakhtinian/Volosinovian semiotic analysis.     

Adolescents’ Mental Health Outcomes According to Different Types of Exposure to Ongoing Terror Attacks

This study investigates the impact of several types of exposure to terror attacks on adolescents’ psychological outcomes in the context of ongoing terror. A total of 913 adolescents (51% girls) aged 12 to 18 years (12–13.6 = 33%; 13.7–15.6 = 38%; 15.7–18 = 28%) took part in the study. Detailed data were collected concerning objective, subjective and “mixed” types of exposure to terror, as well as demographics, post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS), emotional and behavioral problems and overall psychological and psychiatric difficulties. Subjective exposure was found to be the most important contributor to adolescents’ post-traumatic stress and other mental health problems in this context. Gender also had important effects. The effects of objective and mixed types of exposure, as well as age, were less prominent. We did find, however, that the more adolescents consulted media, the less they experienced behavioral and emotional problems. Given that subjective experiences appear to be the best factor in explaining mental health outcomes when adolescents are confronted with persistent terror, the cognitive and emotional dynamics along with the coping behavior linked to such experiences merit further investigation.