Adolescent's Mental Health in Context of Indirect Exposure to Terrorism: A Qualitative Study.

The escalating indirect exposure to terrorism through media has contributed to rising mental health issues among adolescents. The terrorist attack on Army Public School Peshawar (APSP) in Pakistan has received immense media coverage and the violence shown has touched the lives of natives. The current study adopts an Interpretative phenomenological analysis to explore the impact of indirect exposure to terrorism through media-television and Facebook-on adolescents' mental health in relation to terrorist attack on APSP. Moreover, the effect of changes occurred in parents' behaviour and school settings after the stated terrorist attack were also considered. To gather data, six Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) were conducted with adolescents ( = 45) who were enrolled in educational institutes far from the epicentre of the attack and came to know about the attack through media. Acquired qualitative data was subjected to thematic analysis revealing that indirect exposure to terrorism through media negatively impact the mental health of adolescents. Likewise, the abrupt changes in school settings and parental behaviour cause disruption in their immediate environment that further impacts their well-being.