This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

George Mendelson, MB, BS, FRANZCP
Suite 7 30 Queens Rd Melbourne, Australia 3004

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1983;40(9):1036-1037.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

I read with interest the article by Bromet et al describing reactions of psychiatric patients to the events at the Three Mile Island (TMI), Pa, nuclear reactor (ARCHIVES 1982; 39:725-730). There are several comments that need to be made.

First, the title of their article is misleading. There was no "nuclear accident" at TMI. As has been described in detail by McCracken (Commentary 1979;67:27-39), the failure of equipment that did occur triggered off builtin safety mechanisms, which in fact performed exactly as they were designed to perform. McCracken also noted that the press coverage given to this event was generally sensational and alarmist; hence I believe that the study by Bromet et al is more accurately described not as reactions to a nuclear accident but as reactions to media stories of the type that could potentially cause mass panic.

Second, the finding of no difference on measures . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?