Are Trigger Warnings Actually Helpful?

Are Trigger Warnings Actually Helpful?
“Basic human decency means professors like myself should be aware of students’ traumatic experiences, and give them a heads up about course content”( Levinovitz 1). Trigger warnings are statements at the start of a piece of writing, video, etc., that alerts the viewer of the fact that it could potentially contain emotionally stressful material. These warnings are important to include in colleges and even high schools because of the insight they give the teens and young adults before heading into an assignment. They let the students know that there might be pictures, words, or anything that might be considered a “trigger” in the upcoming readings. Triggers could cause students to go through emotional distress, panic attacks, and it could
Teachers believe that it’s not important to address these issues and that if the students need to step out of class for these assignments that they should probably seek the help that they need. A college psychology professor, Richard J. McNally, believes that, “Trigger warnings are countetheripudic because they encourage avoidance of reminders of trauma, and avoidance maintains P.T.S.D.” (McNally 6). His point being that avoiding the problem will only make it bigger, and that it’d be easier to deal with it or simply get help. This is an issue, because not every student gets the proper health care they need, and a majority of the students avoid even asking for help. “Almost 73 percent of students living with a mental health condition experienced a mental health crisis on campus.(7) Yet, 34.2 percent reported that their college did not know about their crisis.(8)” (College Student Mental Health Statistics 2). These “mental health crisis’” could possibly be prevented by including trigger warnings, and helping the students through hard