CRIME
Having your home robbed is admittedly less traumatic than, say, dodging bullets from an AK-47. But the psychological aftermath of a break-in can be surprisingly intense.
"The majority of victims say they will never have the same feeling of security and inviolability that they had in the past," reports Billie Corder, Ed.D., a psychiatrist at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.
In interviews with 68 burglary victims, Corder found that half described the experience as feeling "like a violation or rape." The rape metaphor, used even by some men, may sound melodramatic. But for the study's middle-class subjects, most previously untouched by crime, the fact that a stranger violated the sanctity of their abode was unnerving.
The feelings of violation led several women to wash all of their clothes after a burglar had rummaged through them. One laundered everything three times. And in a third of adults, sleeplessness and anxiety lingered four or more months after the break-in.
