That might have been the original intent of a "trigger warning", but their sheer prevalence today indicates that this is either no longer true or else we have nothing less than a massive public health emergency that we should be dropping everything else to work to address.

This is really frustrating for someone with a genuine allergy because you feel drowned out by all the "fake" allergies that are just preferences and as a result sometimes people take allergies less seriously because they assume your "allergy" is just a preference, or just generally take it less seriously. For example, if someone asks you if something contains gluten, knowing nothing else, what would you estimate are the chances they are actually seriously allergic to it? These days, with the popularity of avoiding gluten in the west, maybe below 50%. This is a scary situation for anyone with a genuine allergy.

I'm sure it's just as frustrating for people with genuine PTSD or other situations where real mental health trauma could occur, to be drowned out and lumped in with all these folks who merely experience mild discomfort at discussing a topic.

So, a plea -- if you don't genuinely suffer from a serious physical or mental health response to a situation, but merely mild discomfort, be honest and just say you don't like something. You're making it worse for people with genuine problems when you lie and call it a genuine medical problem.

If you're not sure, a good rule of thumb is if you haven't been to or plan to soon go to a doctor (or really want to, but can't for some reason eg financial) to discuss the problem, it must not be disturbing your life enough to count as a real malady.

I spend a lot of time in SF and LA, and in both places, the types of people who demand trigger warnings (and, related, talk about microaggressions and other imaginary offenses) are pretty common.

That also happens to be where a huge chunk of HN commenters/readers are based.

It is our reality. I do celebrate the news that outside of the SF/LA metro areas this cancer has not yet reached, but my day-to-day is very much affected by it.

This whole topic feels a bit... I dunno... fabricated? astroturfed? I mean are these things really an issue outside of maybe a few humanities departments in super-liberal private colleges?

It's an election year folks.

But your statement:

> They're to prevent panic attacks.

Seems to counter the arguments in the link:

> Richard J. McNally, a Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, while writing for Pacific Standard,[13] discussed the merit of trigger warnings noting that "Trigger warnings are designed to help survivors avoid reminders of their trauma, thereby preventing emotional discomfort. Yet avoidance reinforces PTSD. Conversely, systematic exposure to triggers and the memories they provoke is the most effective means of overcoming the disorder" while citing several academic studies conducted on PTSD sufferers.

Right, but I'd assume this is probably done in small increments or doses? A person who's finding themselves exposed to said triggers may not be able to control how much of it they get in certain situations, which could arguably leave them off worse after the event.

Maybe it's the implicit assumption that oppression outweighs everything else – i.e someone who is black ipso facto lives a worse life than someone who is white, disregarding all other factors.

I feel like if a critical majority of people actually believed that all colleges were just "factories of oppression, sexual assault, and white supremacy", then we'd have some kind of civil war.

All of these responses seem reasonable. If a student has such a unique life experience that they are not capable of completing standard university coursework, then the onus is on them to make that known to professors or administrators and come to some compromise. It is not the responsibility of the university to label and restructure its courses to acknowledge that there is a tiny fraction of the population that cannot participate in their education without severe distress.

Anything could be a trigger. Anything involving criminal justice could be a trigger for someone falsely (or rightfully!) imprisoned. A rape scene could be a trigger for a rape victim. Certain feminist literature could be a trigger for someone whose life was ruined through a false rape accusation. Someone who was recently dumped or cheated on could be triggered by discussing relationships. Perhaps a physics class triggers someone afflicted by severe existential angst -- entropy always increases? Domestic violence, child abuse, war, general violence, bullying, racism, torture -- many of these, things every college student should consider and think about before graduating -- are all triggers for someone.

So we should really put a trigger warning on every course. Better, let's make that trigger warning describe roughly what's going to be in the course and what students can expect out of it. Better yet, maybe put the grading scheme, reading list, and the rest of the administrative information about the course in it. We could call it some kind of nonsense word so as not to offend the people who hate trigger warnings or the people who love them. How about "syllabus".

Course syllabi already have a generally accurate description of course content so students may choose whether or not to expose themselves to any given material or prepare themselves.

The fact that a course is a college course and discusses human interaction at all should serve as enough as a trigger warning for anyone -- there could be triggering material in it. Period. Even if a class is about cold war economics, a student could bring up rape or racism in discussion.

Successful treatment often actually involves confronting the fear, little by little, until it no longer causes discomfort:

"Exposure therapy is a type of cognitive behavioral therapy[118] that involves assisting trauma survivors to re-experience distressing trauma-related memories and reminders in order to facilitate habituation and successful emotional processing of the trauma memory. Most exposure therapy programs include both imaginal confrontation with the traumatic memories and real-life exposure to trauma reminders; this therapy modality is well supported by clinical evidence."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posttraumatic_stress_disorder#...

Uncontrolled exposure is more likely to worsen the anxiety than extinguish it.

I mean, are you really arguing that the clinical approach to trauma is to surprise the patient with the topic in the middle of important everyday tasks?

Obviously, trigger warning provide a useful tool for people to manage their own exposure to these panic attacks. If this was not the case then no-one would ever suffer from PTSD as it would be instantly self-healing!

> Avoidance in the form of 'trigger warnings' may actually worsen the underlying problem for people with PTSD because avoidance can strengthen the underlying fear.

The argument is that active avoidance is bad because it makes the ensuing panic attacks worse when they do happen and makes it harder for exposure therapy to work. Your post is addressing a strawman.

I repeat myself: "Obviously, trigger warnings provide a useful tool for people to manage their own exposure to these panic attacks."

This allows for simple acts such as taking anti-anxiety medication beforehand or sitting at the end of a row to allow you to leave a lecture unobtrusively if you need to.

This would be for however long is needed to seek the treatment to return to a stable enough level of mental health to return to university.

I had a fear of heights that bordered on panic attacks. I worked out of the 29th floor of a building for the first time in my life and felt like half of the day was spent thinking about how high I was.

I was looking for housing and every highrise I had to look out the window and feel a wave of intense panic. So I chose a highrise, and made myself look out the window all the time. Took some time, but I definitely don't have the same reaction I used to. I'm actually totally fine.

Trigger warnings seem like the same strategy only elevated on an institutional level. So while they do prevent panic attacks, they would actually do the traumatized more harm than good.

The other thing is that people can develop phobias against almost everything. So no matter how many trigger warnings the university put up, there could always be one group which finds their particular triggers not marked up well enough.

I'm sure no true Scotsman would have a problem with that definition...