Dubai ‘bomb’ threat: Driven to the edge by desperation

Dubai: Threatening to detonate explosives while standing in a government building is clearly “an act of desperation”, according to a clinical psychologist.

Speaking to Gulf News, Dr Saliha Afridi, managing director of a psychology clinic, said that the additive effect stress has on people can lead to such extreme steps.

“Even little things, one on top of another, can break a person. But if your survival is being threatened, it pushes you to a corner and you come out attacking,” she said.

Dr Afridi said that the Uzbek national Zulfiya Hamraeva – who threatened to blow herself up on Sunday – was most probably going through very serious personal problems and this may have seemed to her as the only way to communicate.

“When a person is going through problems they are not thinking clearly. Their frontal lobe is not functioning, which is your seat of reason and decision making. This woman, for example, did not realise that her actions would be damaging.”

Dr Afridi said that when looking at people who are involved in such cases, a bio-psycho-social analysis needs to be done.

“A lot of people may just not have a very high tolerance to stress. They may have a family history of anxiety, depression or suicide. Also, if you are away from home, different rules and norms of a society add to your anxiety. These two factors along with psychological ones need to be considered for a more comprehensive understanding.”

Too much stress

However, Dr Afridi said that there were warning signs that people can look out for, that indicate the psychological make up of a person under too much stress.

“One indicator is if someone becomes very reactive, edgy and irritable, with an exaggerated response to the smallest thing. Some people may also display anxiety by crying. If you find a person crying a lot, they are definitely on the edge of something and we don’t know what is on the other side.”

Another indicator, according to Dr Afridi, was if a person was unable to perform their day-to-day activities, neglecting their responsibilities and tend to look dishevelled.