CRY FOR HELP: Sarah Johnson screams "My patient is not dead, my patient is not dying; all she needs is oxygen" as she seeks help at the Convention Center in New Orleans during aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in September 2005. Images such as this one can contribute to a low level of stress and anxiety because of such news media exposure. (MELISSA PHILLIP -- Houston Chronicle)

Five years later, the immediate shock, terror and disbelief are gone, but the anxiety that 9/11 and other disasters reported in the news media generates in people, even people not directly affected by them, has not gone away.

In fact, as one researcher is finding, many of us these days are experiencing a constant, low level of stress and anxiety because of news media exposure.

Part of it, too, is the stress churned up by technological advances and the ubiquitous and intrusive electronic gadgets that dominate our daily lives. Peaceful quiet is in short supply.

"What I'm arguing is that as part of this sensory overload, we hear about every disaster everywhere in the world, constantly, over and over," says Mary McNaughton-Cassill, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas at San Antonio who studies stress and stress management. "In the past, you heard about disasters, but that was usually buffered by time and distance.

"It wasn't live, and there wasn't nearly the volume of it. But CNN and 24-hour cable news changed that."

Here it's useful to make the distinction between fear — worry about a real and immediate threat — and anxiety — concern about a possible threat. Looking at it in the human evolutionary context, people reacted to negative and scary events that they experienced unfiltered. Now, the bad news can be remote yet disturbing in the sense of could this — terrorism, a deadly storm, random violence — happen in my city and country, could this happen to me?

In her research, McNaughton-Cassill found that individuals who looked back at tragic events such as the death of Princess Diana and ruminated on all the "if onlys" — if only she hadn't gotten into that car — had a harder time getting over it.

And media reports about 9/11, Katrina and plane crashes provide a mountain of "if onlys." It's not that people become clinically depressed and need medication and therapy. They may not even be aware that they're affected. But what she calls their "malaise" level climbs, a combination of worry, depressed mood and lack of trust in the people in charge.

All of this matters because study after study of the mind-body connection is showing that chronic levels of stress are implicated in a number of psychiatric and physical ills, from mood disorders to heart disease.

McNaughton-Cassill thinks the stress-generating media reports go back to the Vietnam War, which brought terrifying images of napalm bombing into American homes. But a seemingly endless and insistent stream followed, including in recent years, frightening events such as the Oklahoma City bombing, the series of school shootings, genocide in Bosnia and Africa, the terrorist attacks and anthrax threats, the sniper shootings in Washington, and the destruction and failures of Katrina.

Add to that Iraq, Lebanon and rumblings about nukes in Iran.

"Research shows that even if you didn't know anyone at Oklahoma City or in 9/11, if you watched (reports) a lot, you could have minor

Of course, there's another side to this. Victor Cline, a clinical psychologist in Salt Lake City who has looked at the effects of violence in the media, says that while some people are stressed out by 9/11 and similarly horrific images, others have been desensitized by terrorists threats and overexposure to man-made and natural destruction.

"Some people have seen so much on TV that they don't even believe it anymore, like in England where terrorists were planning to blow up 10 or 12 airliners. That's a reverse problem."

Likewise, some turn away from painful images of starving children in Africa or broken bodies after a Baghdad bombing. "We should be (psychologically) healthy enough that we can experience some inner sorrow and distress when we see people mutilated or injured or tortured or attacked," Cline adds. "But after a while people get numb. It (repeated exposure) blunts conscience."

There is a kind of disconnect as some viewers take in images of suffering children and bombings on evening newscasts and then go out to dinner at a favorite restaurant. But unsettling as it is upon reflection, that disconnect is a coping tool in an anxious world, says McNaughton-Cassill. "I argue that if you couldn't get up and go to dinner, you'd be paralyzed. You couldn't function."

The researcher emphasizes her work is not aimed at blaming the media for our anxiety, but rather at understanding the powerful psychological impact of this exposure, the internalized anxiety it creates and ways to cope with it.

Each person is affected differently and reacts differently. Some want to stay informed but know when to turn off the TV and move past the scary headlines.

Others are addicted to 24-hour news. In the middle are those who watch and read moderate amounts and get anxious.

"I'm arguing for a lot more discussion on this and a lot more thoughtfulness on how people want to manage it in their lives," McNaughton-Cassill says.

Contributing to stress are the inescapable computers, cell phones, iPods, instant e-mail messaging and other electronic devices that command our waking hours.

When McNaughton-Cassill asked students in her stress-management class to log the "alone" time in their day — alone time with their thoughts and no electronic intrusion — they recorded less than one hour. Quiet, thoughtful time is a vital coping mechanism for stress.

Her coping mechanism? "I don't watch TV news. I listen to the radio, NPR, and read the (newspaper) and news magazines. It's the TV news visuals that get to me, and by the time you realize you don't want to see something, it's too late."