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Lord John Alderdice: (There are many aspects of trauma support in Northern Ireland.) There's St Dunstan's, and the tremendous support it gives; and the support of close friends and family. There's also little doubt that in all sorts of trauma, people suffer. But if they have a close, constructive, confiding set of relationships – a network of relationships - that is tremendously protective. And people who don't have that, are certainly disadvantaged in a way that no amount of therapy can replace.

The question of perpetrators

On the question of perpetrators, of course it depends very much on how people view the experience they went through. D-Day veterans won't see themselves as perpetrators. They will see themselves as people who sacrificed themselves, their families and friends and so on, and they may well be, in some cases, troubled by what happened, what they did, had to do, to survive. But they will not see themselves as perpetrators; they will see themselves as defenders, and that is also the case for many people in paramilitary organisations. But not all, and people have different kinds of reactions.

There are some people who get very excited by killing other people. They get a real buzz from that, and giving that up is extremely difficult. And even when they do give it up, they can very often find themselves breaking down at a later stage when some threat arises, where they feel excitement about doing something in a wholly other context where they can't get involved in violence in the same kind of way. So it's a complex area, this business of perpetrators.

And I'll just make one final comment. There may be those who you would see as perpetrators who don't see themselves as that; and others whom you may not see as perpetrators, where the implications carry on. I think of a patient, for example, whose father was a scientist involved in developing the A-bomb. And there's little doubt, in looking back, that his life changed dramatically after Hiroshima. His way of reacting and dealing with problems, as a scientist who'd been involved with that and who is now long since dead, changed; and my own sense is it changed because he was immensely troubled by what he had been involved in. It meant that the way he conducted his family and personal life was extremely disturbed and damaged and had a profoundly damaging effect on his children who continue to suffer now.

That's a kind of perpetrator effect carried on through the generations that might not be the kind of thing that you might expect to see; someone who, as an academic and as a researcher, felt himself to be a perpetrator. And the impact carried on into the next generation who, in fact in one case, were so disturbed that they made sure there wasn't a third generation to pass it on to.

Peter Byrne: It's great to have the final word. I'm Peter Byrne, I'm a psychiatrist and I'm a Southern Ireland person. So I'm very cautious before I make great proclamations about Northern Ireland.

I think one of the things that's struck me is the enormously positive role of the media, and to this day I always remember a television report following the murder of two bachelor brothers in their 50s who just happened to be working on a police station in Northern Ireland.

There have been some truly shocking murders, not just Omagh, and I think reporting those is the right thing to do. When I was at school, a naughty state radio journalist devoted his entire programme to the names of people who've been murdered, be they civilians or policemen or soldiers; I think that's immensely powerful.

I can understand collective denial, because as regards Northern Ireland , you're always two sentences away from a big row about politics. So you have to say things very carefully and very slowly. Of course we're going to need psychiatrists and clinical psychologists, but I think what's also needed is something that social psychologists could contribute, and that is how in all forms of prejudice and hatred, there's this idea of them and us. Sometimes we define ourselves by our hatred of the others – of “them”. You see this in the BNP (British National Party), you see it in refugees, you see it in so many conflicts. I think, that discussion has not started in Northern Ireland . I'm quite sure people in Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland would say, ‘Let's have truth commissions in South Africa and Chile – but we don't want one.'

Mark Brayne: Thank you all very much for coming and for staying to this point. I've found tonight quite riveting, and we'll summarise it on the web site and put quite an extensive transcript as well for those who couldn't be with us.

Today, in a sense, we've talked about the story and the impact of trauma on society and how that is represented – less on the journalistic experience, although we have touched on it. We will return to these things in future Dart Centre discussions here at the Frontline Club. Thank you all very much, and particularly to our three panellists for making the long journey from Belfast - great to have you with us, and thank you again.

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