But we're seeing a significant increase in business from people wanting to leave the area. With each of the aftershocks, which have totaled more than 5,000 of varying intensity, the fears have assumed a pervasive, even obsessive dimension. Conversations are dominated by the quake. Among the symptoms of L.A.'s post-traumatic stress disorder are uncontrollable flashbacks, nightmares, hypervigilance and anger about the lack of control over one's life, according to Mory Framer, clinical director of the Barrington Psychiatric Center, which treated more than 1,000 victims. The Northridge quake left two special psychological scars because it came in the early hours when people were at home and in bed, thus transforming those two refuges into places of lethal danger.
Workers take interminable breaks, have difficulty concentrating and generally show low productivity.
Families too have suffered. Unstable relationships can be pushed across the line into outright dysfunction. In some cases the Barrington team observed, one spouse became hypersexual and the other hyposexual, with obviously destabilizing consequences. Adults frequently misdirect their anger toward spouses and children. The woman had lost two other children in a quake in her native Guatemala.