Chicago ‘crisis fatigue’: As city wraps up summer, many look for calmer autumn.
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You can count Pastor Donovan Price among those eagerly anticipating the arrival of a calm, cooler autumn after a hot, violent summer in the city, though he’s skeptical the seasonal change alone will do much to extinguish some of the conflicts that have driven Chicago crime.
Price, a victim advocate who responds to crime scenes across the city to assist families, said he feels the mental strain that comes with shuttling between scenes of tragedy and consoling grieving relatives while managing the pitfalls of city living. Despite going to as many as 10 scenes on the most violent nights, he admits to feeling mentally exhausted though not burned out thanks to his faith.
“It’s not a burnout, it’s just a kind of fatigue-oriented situation,” Price told the Tribune. “But the calling I have is the calling I have and so burnout doesn’t come with that. Fatigue can come with that ... but burnout? I wouldn’t say the word.”
As the city reached Labor Day, the traditional end of summer, some are hoping for a reprieve from a seemingly endless stream of troubling news.
Mental health professionals said the type of exhaustion Price and others have endured — known as “crisis fatigue” — is a real disorder that can affect mental and physical health. Though Chicago headed into September with its lowest homicide total since 2019 following increased violence last year, the city has seen a steady stream of gun violence and random public crime on the streets and on the Chicago Transit Authority railways.
Since 16-year-old Seandell Holliday was fatally shot near the Cloud Gate sculpture in Millennium Park on May 14, at least 17 youths who were 17 years old or younger were fatally shot, according to city records. Among them, Andre Lamont Smith, a 16-year-old Urban Prep student fatally shot Aug. 14 in the Far South Side’s Golden Gate neighborhood.
In addition to gun violence, the summer news cycle has included daily stories on armed robberies and carjackings citywide, some perpetrated by armed teenagers, according to police. The Chicago area also received international attention following Highland Park’s deadly July Fourth mass shooting.
Two years after the George Floyd case triggered waves of looting, downtown Chicago and its adjacent areas have not been spared from crime this year. Tourists, travelers and boaters have been the targets of random transit attacks and robberies.
The city also has endured a streak of bicyclists and pedestrians killed in hit-and-runs, along with boating injuries and deaths on Lake Michigan’s “playpen.”
The 2022 summer of trouble was capped by chaos caused by social media-advertised street “takeovers” with drag racers and “drifters” from several states converging on neighborhoods to spin doughnuts for social media. Those events led to clashes between participants and police and resulted in criminal charges.
Politically, this summer’s issues came at an early stage of the next mayoral election cycle. Crime management and Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s response is certain to be a topic on the minds of voters in February.
The number of homicides this summer is down compared with 2020 and 2021, but City Hall’s messaging on safer streets and fewer killings has at times been undermined by high-profile incidents, including those in downtown, as well as by increases in other crimes. The cost of the city response also has been an issue, as the city was forced to make concessions after an outcry about the Chicago Police Department canceling officers’ days off.
Through Aug. 24, the city this summer has seen 196 homicides, according to police records, down from 277 last year June through August. The 2022 figure is well ahead of 2019′s 144 killings during the same summer stretch, the last year before factors related to the pandemic set in.
“Honestly, I’m really interested to hear what these people who are running for mayor are going to say. What is their plan?” asked Tamar Manasseh, a South Side peace activist and founder of Mothers Against Senseless Killing.
There is some relief to have summer in the past, Manasseh said.
”People have been hating summer a long time where I’m from,” Manasseh said.
“My son loathes it and he’s been like that ... since he was a teenager. He knows. It’s like killing season,” she said. “This is what happens.”
Experts said the risk of crisis fatigue increases in a city such as Chicago.
“There’s more risk when you’re living in a big place that’s filled with all kinds of different stressors. The reality, certainly in recent times, stress piles on top of stress on top of stress,” said Arianna Galligher, a licensed social worker trained in working with trauma victims.
During the height of the pandemic, Galligher, associate director of the STAR Trauma Recovery Center at Ohio State University’s medical center, wrote an article discussing how an overload of bad news can cause “a mixture of exhaustion, rage, disgust, despair, desperation, hypervigilance, anxiety and grief” that can mimic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
A hallmark of crisis fatigue, Galligher said, were symptoms that typically affect first responders, police and others who work in crisis fields. Chicago police officers have endured exhaustion and a rash of suicides that their supporters have tied to long work hours, low morale and canceled days off.
“Moral injury is really when you’re bearing witness to the worst parts of humanity on a pretty consistent basis; the worst kind of pain a person can experience,” said Galligher, whose grant-funded organization offers support to crime victims in Columbus, Ohio. “You’re left to wonder what good is there in the world. It really shakes up your moral perspective.”
Summer crimes such as the June 24 shooting of 5-month-old Cecilia Thomas in South Shore and constant exposure to graphic viral videos of Chicago shootings drown out any claims by Lightfoot and police about a drop in homicides, said Manasseh, whose organization addresses violence prevention, food insecurity and housing issues.
“Just because you said there was less (crime) doesn’t mean it’s less ... it didn’t drop so much where the average person would see a difference,” Manasseh said.
“You saying it’s not as violent as it was last year, but yet every single day (online), I’m seeing new and improved ways of people being murdered in Chicago,” she said. “I’m sorry. That does nothing for me.”
Experts said the prevalence of news about violence has added to anxiety over the pandemic and the emergency of new health threats such as monkeypox.
Disturbing social media images can also reinforce our levels of despair, which can ultimately threaten both mental and physical health, Galligher added.
“Some of this is a byproduct of having information that’s just more readily available on a daily basis, on a minute-to-minute basis,” she said. “But some of it is we are living in a stressful time and there are a lot of things for people to cope with and try to figure out how to navigate and ... figure out what is my risk level for these things happening all around me. It’s a lot to try to figure out.”
Galligher suggested that those feeling crisis fatigue seek out positive activities and outlets to balance the negative images.
“Unless people are very intentional about seeking balance with the information they’re consuming ... people can become jaded and very tired,” she said. “A lot of people start to lose hope and that’s really where the despair and fatigue set in.”
Correction: An earlier version incorrectly stated that 5-month-old shooting victim Cecelia Thomas was 5 years old.
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