N.Y. County District Branch Shares Experience After Terrorist Attacks

We were unprepared for what we saw and heard on September 11. We had to process trauma after incomprehensible trauma and continue to do our work. Terrified ourselves, without a frame of reference, we banded together for support and stability.

Following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, after a five-hour trip home, and the inability to get to work on September 12 because of the closing of roads, bridges, and so on in New York City, the executive director of the New York County District Branch, Rosalie Landy, with the approval and assistance of its Executive Committee, and Herbert Peyser, M.D., APA’s Area 2 trustee, set up temporary headquarters in her home. Her telephone number and e-mail address were publicized to DB members for those who wished to volunteer their services.

Numerous calls and e-mails to aid New York County came in from all over the country, as well as outside the United States.

The DB worked quickly with St. Vincent’s help line, the NYU site-visiting teams, the Salvation Army, the American Red Cross, and the Disaster Psychiatry Outreach. Our immediate past president, Jack Drescher, M.D., spent September 12 with the Red Cross visiting different sites.

The DB then organized two groups—one for those who were willing to make site visits and another for those who were willing to see victims in their offices for one to two sessions for consultation at no charge. Both lists of names were circulated to NYU (Dr. Carol Bernstein), Disaster Psychiatry Outreach (Dr. Craig Katz), and New York State Psychiatric Association (Dr. James Nininger). Our secretary and public affairs chair, Vivian Pender, M.D., also organized a group of 60 volunteer psychiatrists and psychologists from the Association for Psychoanalytical Medicine of the Columbia Psychoanalytic Center.

DBs outside the metropolitan area were contacted (Queens, Bronx, Greater Long Island, Westchester, Brooklyn, New Jersey, and Connecticut), and they set up their own referral services for those victims and/or their families who resided in their respective areas. Feeling that New York County was not alone was crucial to our stability. Almost every evening, we called each other and reviewed the day. It was our sedative.

Dr. Peyser referred one of the large mercantile companies that had offices in the World Trade Center to us for assistance with its staff members. They were and still are being referred to psychiatrists for consultation.

A large construction company, with 375 employees, that volunteered its services in the search and rescue effort at the World Trade Center sent out a cry for help. Responding to the request, Dr. Peyser spent the day counseling individuals and groups at the company. Several employees had been lost in the collapse of the buildings. The management was mistakenly concerned about the men who were crying and thought that the men who weren’t talking were “fine.” One man, who had run from the lobby of 1 WTC while glass and concrete were flying around him and in front of him and bodies were falling to the ground, was convinced that he would die. For weeks afterward, he could not sleep, and although he kept telling himself he was fine, the repetitions did not change his belief that he died. Over the next few weeks, Dr. Pender monitored and referred this man and other employees who continued to be symptomatic.

After the second week, Dr. Pender was called by the company and told that its insurance company was taking over the care of its employees. “I felt suddenly shut out after caring for a very large family, and I wasn’t sure that they would get good care. I had to reinvest my feelings,” said Dr. Pender. How do the caretakers take care of themselves? “I began making rounds, from ground zero, to the Family Assistance Center, to the morgue, to the fire companies, to the churches and schools. I tried to educate all the professionals, including journalists, who were listening to and absorbing the first-hand stories. They too needed debriefing.”

TV and print journalists interviewed many psychiatrists on a daily basis. We felt we were successful in our efforts to keep the public informed of telephone numbers to call for help and educate the public about the expected reactions to acute stress, trauma, and grief.

Working with school pediatricians, Dr. Daniel Koblentz, a child psychiatrist, was asked to speak on somatic symptoms of stress in children. The DB will begin coordinating with 300 volunteer members of the New York Council on Child Psychiatry.

The DB also organized the Task Force on Disaster and is in the process of setting up educational meetings for psychiatrists and the public on how to handle the trauma experienced in this tragedy. To help in our efforts, we have received a $10,000 Erich Lindemann Disaster Grant from APA and $500 from the Colorado Psychiatric Society. Most of this money will be used to hold conference calls (several have already been held), to contact our members by mail and ask those who have not offered their services pro bono to do so, and to organize a legislative breakfast to educate legislators on posttraumatic stress disorder. Dr. Pender has organized presentations by Drs. Vamik Volkan, Jerrold Post, and Otto Kernberg on terrorism and religious fundamentalism.

Trying to comprehend the incomprehensible is crucial to the process of healing. ▪

Dr. Pender is chair of the Public Affairs Committee of the New York County District Branch, and Ms. Landy is executive director.