Murder victims’ families launch pilot program to combat PTSD
Nichole Bell’s physical symptoms appeared shortly after her brother’s 1995 homicide in Roxbury.
“I started having panic attacks. I didn’t know what was going on. I was at the emergency room every single day because I didn’t know what was wrong with me,” she said. “I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep . ... They kept telling me I needed to see a psychiatrist and I thought, ‘I’m not crazy.’ ”
Bell, 42, of Dorchester, would eventually learn her little brother’s unsolved slaying on July 21, 1995, had triggered symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, commonly known as PTSD, which she still battles to this day. Amin Bell was 18 when he was killed in a drive-by shooting at a housing project in Roxbury.
“I blamed myself for a long time because he was supposed to come live with me in Dorchester,” Bell said. “The night that it happened, he called me. ... I always said if I would have told him to come right then and there, maybe it wouldn’t have happened.”
Mary Franklin, the founder of the Women Survivors of Homicide Movement, said Bell’s story is not uncommon. In fact, Franklin was diagnosed with PTSD last year. That’s why Franklin is hoping to launch a 12week pilot program aimed at helping women in her group who have been diagnosed with PTSD receive spa treatments like acupuncture, massages, chiropractic care, and aroma and sound therapy.
“It’s the story of thousands of women who live in the city of Boston who look like me and they can’t afford services for PTSD beyond pills and a therapist,” Franklin said yesterday from her Roslindale apartment that doubles as her organization’s headquarters.
Franklin said the stigma of PTSD keeps some women like her and Bell from help.
“What it does is it traps you in whatever is wrong,” she said. “For me, coming out (with PTSD) has given me freedom.”
Franklin’s late husband, Melvin Franklin, was murdered in Dorchester on Oct. 15, 1996. He was 39 and the father of her three children. Her husband’s slaying remains unsolved. Coping with that pain has prompted Franklin’s symptoms, which include fear that she or her children will be harmed, depression, and struggling to deal with strangers who innocently might touch her.
Franklin hopes the proposed pilot helps highlight why homicide survivors could benefit from the same treatments military veterans receive.
“We don’t want to take anything away from veterans because they deserve everything they have and more,” Franklin said. “But we want the same services or services that are similar.”
Franklin said she plans to discuss the proposal at a meeting next month at Boston police headquarters.
BPD Capt. Haseeb Hosein called the trauma survivors of homicide experience a “silent killer” and said police Commissioner William B. Evans and Mayor Martin J. Walsh support the spa pilot.
“They’re committed to trauma response, trauma awareness,” he said. “They’re committed to unsolved homicides.”