Lightning bolt keeps on shocking

02 September 2016 - 09:11 By TAIGH CONNELLY

Depression and anxiety plague the survivors of lightning strikes for decades. This is a key finding of researchers who traced and interviewed 10 survivors of a 1994 lightning tragedy in Limpopo, in which four girls from a Johannesburg primary school were killed while sleeping in a tent.Half of the Modimolle survivors said they still had vision problems.Up to 100 South Africans are killed by lightning strikes every year; four or five times as many people survive.Psychiatrists and doctors from the US and the University of Pretoria found that three of the 10, now in their 30s, suffer depression and anxiety - a 50% higher figure than in the general population.Former Springbok surfer Pierre Tostee, 50, who was struck by lightning in 1986, said the findings may help to explain his experience."I remember waking up dazed, confused and tingling," said Tostee. He later had panic attacks and anxiety but had not connected them to the lightning strike...

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