"Witnesses on bus could be traumatized for years"

There could be a lifelong and potentially life-altering psychological impact on the 36 passengers who witnessed the painful screams and gruesome murder of a Greyhound-bus rider on Wednesday night, psychologists say.

"Because we are not used to this kind of event, just the gruesomeness of it is a bit like experiencing an earthquake. The ground beneath you, psychologically, never feels quite secure again," said Doug Saunders, a clinical psychologist in Toronto.

The bus passengers -- at least one of them a child -- were terrorized and scrambled off the vehicle as a man stabbed another man to death, eventually sawing off the unidentified victim's head.

Witnesses to such horrific events can feel less safe in the world, and they can experience long-term problems, such as insomnia, vivid flashbacks, constant irritability or emotional breakdowns -- symptoms that often describe post-traumatic stress, said Mr. Saunders."

Tell you what makes ME irritable, it's when ambulance chasing shrinks do their level best to convince people how very frail they really are, so come sit on my couch for $100 an hour. The first decapitated head I ever saw freaked me out and that lasted all of a day or so. Then again, there wasn't anyone around to tell us that weeping instead of manning-up and forgetting the stupid thing was the best way to get back to being somewhat sane. I guarantee you that every last female on that bus will be "scarred for life" and thank heavens people weren't ALWAYS this fragile or we'd have been nothing more than another of nature's failures.

Get over it. A little head never hurt anyone.