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Bad news really does harm your health. New research reveals that people frequent exposure to media coverage of traumatic events increases the risk of acute stress.

Researchers at the University of California in Irvine found that people who were exposed to six or more daily hours of exposure to media coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing in the week afterward were more likely to suffer more acute stress than those who have been at or near the terrorist attack. Furthermore the risk of acute stress symptoms increased with each additional hour of bombing-related media exposure via television, social media, videos, print or radio.

"We were very surprised at the degree to which repeated media exposure was so strongly associated with acute stress symptoms," lead author E. Alison Holman, associate professor of nursing science at UC Irvine, said in a news release.

"We suspect that there's something about repeated exposure to violent images or sounds that keeps traumatic events alive and can prolong the stress response in vulnerable people. There is mounting evidence that live and video images of traumatic events can trigger flashbacks and encourage fear conditioning. If repeatedly viewing traumatic images reactivates fear or threat responses in the brain and promotes rumination, there could be serious health consequences," Holman added.

The latest study involved a nationally representative sample of 4,675 adults two to four weeks after the 2013 Boston Marathon.

The findings revealed participants who were exposed to six or more hours per day of bombing-related media coverage were nine times more likely to report high acute stress than those who had less than hour of daily exposure.

Some symptoms associated with acute stress include intrusive thoughts, feeling on edge, avoiding reminders of the event and feeling detached from it.

The study also found that previous exposure to collective traumas like the 9/11 attacks or the Sandy Hook school shooting put people at even greater risk of developing acute stress.

"In our prior work, we found that early and repeated exposure to violent images from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and the Iraq War may have led to an increase in physical and psychological ailments up to three years [later]," explained co-researcher Roxane Cohen Silver, professor of psychology & social behavior, medicine and public health at UC Irvine. "Our new findings contribute to the growing body of research suggesting that there is no psychological benefit to repeated exposure to graphic images of horror."

"When you repeatedly see images of a person with gruesome injuries after an event is over, it's like the event continues and has its own presence in your life," Holman added. "Prolonged media exposure can turn what was an acute experience into a chronic form of stress. People may not realize how stressful these media-based exposures are. Looking at these images over and over again is not productive and may be harmful."

The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.