By Peggy O'Farrell
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Minute by minute, television, radio and online news sources offer the latest grim details of the United States-led invasion of Iraq: casualty counts to number of bombs dropped.

There comes a point - and it's sooner than most of us think - when 24-hour, instant-access news adds up to too much information. And as journalists travel with military personnel on the march to Iraq, information becomes available faster than many of us have time to make sense of it.

Total in the very real fear plaguing Tristaters whose loved ones have been deployed to the military action, and you get enough stress and anxiety to lead to depression and other serious ailments.

The experts have some advice for those of us overwhelmed by world events: Turn off the radio or television or change the channel to the latest installment of March Madness. Get back to living your life.

"People can just get obsessed with (news), and it's really OK to go watch American Idol and tune out," says Mark Self, a counselor and manager of Concern Services, an employee assistance and behavioral health management program operated by TriHealth. "It's not your patriotic duty to watch news coverage 24 hours a day."

Images of war playing out in the family room and the threat of reprisals on our soil are stressful, but hunkering down with your favorite 24-hour news station isn't going to help.

"It's a very anxiety-producing time for people," says William Hansen, a psychologist with University Psychiatric Services. "I think the natural tendency is to stay online and keep the television on, but I don't think that helps. Staying locked in just exacerbates it."

As difficult as it may be, the best thing we can do, experts say, is to stick to our daily routine: Get the kids to school, go to work, go to soccer practice, go to church, go out with friends.

"People really need to take stock of where they are and how they're doing and take things a moment, an hour, a day at a time and try to understand the big picture," Hansen says. "There's a grave seriousness about the war, and at the same time, our children still need to eat supper tonight. We need to keep doing the next right thing and paying attention to how we're feeling."

Following a daily routine helps preserve a sense of normalcy, Hansen says, and it can strengthen the sense of being in control of something.

"It's the hobbies, the organizations, the activities that people sometimes will pull away from because of the stress they're feeling that they need to get back to," says Dr. Tom Davis, a psychologist at St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Edgewood. "They can reconnect with those things.

"It is (a matter of) accepting that things like war are out of our control. How do I find things within my life that are within my control? Family, church, friends, activities."

Americans have fought many wars, but this one is different: Sept. 11 taught us that America itself can be a target. And, worries about attacks on the home front only add to worries about what's happening in Iraq.

"It does make it personal," Self says. "It's bad enough to be concerned about family members or someone you know who's over there. It's quite another thing to know that `over there' could become `over here' this time."

The specter of chemical or biological weapons attacks or suicide bombers has some Americans losing sleep, though the odds of any one individual being killed are slim.

"If there are steps you can take, like putting together an emergency kit and an emergency plan of people to call or putting together some canned food and bottled water, that can make you feel like you've got some control," Self says. "It's the unknown that can really bother folks.

"One of the things that might be helpful, too, is to look for the opportunity to help other people. If you see people who are concerned or who have a need, if there's something you can do to help them, that can be empowering or even be useful."

And as awful as things seem to be right now, it's time to keep a firm grip on both reality and perspective, the experts say.

Realistically, Self points out, we're more likely to die in a traffic accident than a terrorist attack.

And we've survived worse.

"When you can, take the longer-term perspective," he says. "We've been through the Second World War and the Korean conflict and Vietnam. We're very resilient and we'll come through this, too.

"Not without pain and the sacrifices politicians are alluding to, but people have to stay positive and not lose sight of themselves as strong and resilient individuals."