What is stockholm syndrome

People can work with licensed psychologists and psychiatrists. A psychiatrist can prescribe medications that may help alleviate mood disorder symptoms. Psychologists and licensed mental health counselors can help people develop strategies and tools to use when trying to understand and work through their experiences. Learn more about different types of therapy here. Stockholm syndrome is a rare psychological reaction to captivity and, in some instances, abuse.

Feelings of fear, terror, and anger towards a captor or abuser may seem more realistic to most people. However, in extreme situations, such as kidnapping, a person may develop positive feelings towards the captor as a coping mechanism when they feel that their physical and mental well-being is at stake.

While experts do not officially recognize Stockholm syndrome as a mental health disorder, people who have been abused, trafficked, or kidnapped may experience it. Post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD symptoms can create or exacerbate relationship challenges. Learn more, including how to support a partner with…. Depression has been associated with memory loss in several studies. Find out why this happens and how to manage memory loss brought on by depression.

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Fear is a universal human experience. In this Spotlight, we ask why fear evolved, what happens in the body, and why some people enjoy it. What is Stockholm syndrome? Medically reviewed by Timothy J. Legg, Ph. What it is Origins Causes Symptoms Examples Treatment Summary Stockholm syndrome is a psychological response that people often associate with infamous kidnappings and hostage situations.

What is it? Exposure to air pollutants may amplify risk for depression in healthy individuals. But you know, Olof, what I'm scared of is that the police will attack and cause us to die.

American journalist Daniel Lang interviewed everyone involved in the drama a year later for the New Yorker. It paints the most extensive picture of how captors and captives interacted.

The hostages spoke of being well treated by Olsson, and at the time it appeared that they believed they owed their lives to the criminal pair, he wrote. On one occasion a claustrophobic Elisabeth Oldgren was allowed to leave the vault that had become their prison but only with a rope fixed around her neck. She said that at the time she thought it was "very kind" of Olsson to allow her to move around the floor of the bank. Safstrom said he even felt gratitude when Olsson told him he was planning to shoot him - to show the police understood he meant business - but added he would make sure he didn't kill him and would let him get drunk first.

Stockholm Syndrome is typically applied to explain the ambivalent feelings of the captives, but the feelings of the captors change too. Olsson remarked at the beginning of the siege he could have "easily" killed the hostages but that had changed over the days. If they hadn't, I might not be here now. Why didn't any of them attack me? They made it hard to kill. They made us go on living together day after day, like goats, in that filth.

There was nothing to do but get to know each other. The notion that perpetrators can display positive feelings toward captives is a key element of Stockholm Syndrome that crisis negotiators are encouraged to develop, according to an article in the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin. It can improve the chances of hostage survival, it explained.

But while Stockholm syndrome has long been featured on police hostage negotiating courses, it is rarely encountered, says Hugh McGowan, who spent 35 years with the New York Police Department. McGowan was commanding officer and chief negotiator of the Hostage Negotiation Team, which was set up in April in the wake of a number of hostage incidents that took place in - the bank heist that inspired the film Dog Day Afternoon, an uprising that came to a violent end at Attica prison in New York and the massacre at the Munich Olympics.

It occurred at around the time when we were starting to see more hostage situations and maybe people didn't want to take away something that we might see again.

He acknowledges that the term gained currency partly because of the bringing together of the fields of psychology and policing in the field of hostage negotiating. There are no widely accepted diagnostic criteria to identify the syndrome, which is also known as terror-bonding or trauma bonding and it is not in either of the two main psychiatric manuals, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems ICD.

But the underlying principles of how it works can be related to different situations, say some psychologists. One of the most famous examples of a victim with Stockholm syndrome is Patty Hearst , a famous media heiress kidnapped in Hearst eventually helped her captors rob a bank and expressed support for their militant cause. Another high-profile example is Elizabeth Smart , a Utah teen who was kidnapped in Smart showed concern for the welfare of her abductors when police finally found her.

Although some experts disagree, most consider these cases to be clear examples of Stockholm syndrome. Stockholm syndrome is a psychological concept used to explain certain reactions, but it's not a formal diagnosis, said Steven Norton, a forensic psychologist in Rochester, Minnesota. Stockholm syndrome isn't listed in the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-5 , a reference tool psychologists use to diagnose mental health and behavioral conditions.

However, law enforcement and mental health professionals recognize that Stockholm syndrome can occur, so there's a general acceptance and awareness of the condition, Norton said. A person with Stockholm syndrome may start to identify with or form a close connection to the people who have taken him or her hostage, Norton told Live Science.

The captive may begin to sympathize with the hostage takers and may also become emotionally dependent on them, he said. That's because a victim with Stockholm syndrome may become increasingly fearful and depressed and will show a decreased ability to care for themselves.