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9/11: Mental Health in the Wake of Terrorist Attacks

2007; Elsevier BV; Volume: 46; Issue: 9 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1097/chi.0b013e3180dca07f

1527-5418

James Lewis, Hilary Hahn,

Disaster Response and Management

Clearly the point of terrorism-to physically destroy in the immediate proximity and to psychologically disable others distally-was achieved by the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. This volume is an excellent compendium of a diverse set of attempts by mental health professionals to respond immediately to the non-life-threatening social aftermath of the events. Because the number of physically injured survivors needing care was relatively small, the worst terrorist attacks on American soil can be viewed primarily as a mental health disaster:One of the things immediately recognized was that mental health response to the WTC (World Trade Center) attack could not be wholly guided by evidence-based medicine or psychology, in that the understanding of how to treat survivors in the aftermath of a disaster of such magnitude was limited. Thus we identified the need to form the infrastructure that would gather the necessary information so that future decisions about metal health responses could be made on the basis of empirical knowledge. (p. 329)