There are particular factors about computer mediated communication that make it a possibly useful addition to the treatment of disaster trauma. When normal, well adjusted people experience the extreme stress and trauma of a disaster, they may develop symptoms of psychopathology. These include anxiety, depression, sleep disturbances and a profound sense that the world is unsafe. In a review of the findings of an associative relationship between social support and psychological trauma, Flannery describes two formats in which social support is received. These are one's family, friends, co-workers and community links.
Buffers are social exchanges that cushion or mitigate the negative effects of life stresses.
They may or may not be found in one's social network. The Internet represents a means of expanding the social network one is embedded in. For disaster victims, this could represent a means of finding buffers that were not available. In the case of survivors of a plane crash or a train wreck, the victims most often return home to widely separated locations. The establishment of an Internet link for the exclusive use of those survivors would greatly improve their ability to debrief each other as to their personal outcomes from that disaster, and supply each other with a unique buffer against the effects of the trauma.