© 2002 Oxford University Press
The Management of the Human Impact of a Large-Scale Community Disaster: A Perspective on the World Trade Center Terrorist Attack
From the Graduate Program in Applied, Social and Community Psychology at Fairleigh Dickinson University, the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, and Crisis Recovery Services.
Contact author: Jakob Steinberg, PhD, Professor and Director, Graduate Program in Applied, Social and Community Psychology, Fairleigh Dickinson University, 285 Madison Ave., Madison, NJ 07940. E-mail: crisismgmt{at}nac.net
The size and scope of the World Trade Center attack and the number of people who were affected by this incident presented a unique management problem requiring a significant number of mental health workers to address the emotional needs of the survivors, the emergency responders, and the families of all those affected. In this article, I address some of the basic issues of traumatic stress and types of services, specifically group interventions that are useful when providing effective mental health resources in the response to such a large-scale crisis. How trauma is embedded in a community and social context is examined. What response is necessary or possible to provide by groups such as the Volunteer Organizations Active in Disaster (VOAD), the American Red Cross, municipal, county and state level agencies, the corporate community, and the Critical Incident Stress Management Teams is discussed. The role of specialists trained in the treatment of traumatic stress reactions are also considered. It is imperative for communities to provide qualified disaster mental health resources for managing catastrophes of this magnitude.
KEY WORDS: traumatic stress, group crisis intervention, social and community context, crisis response organizations, World Trade Center disaster
