Trauma continues for thousands

SHANKAR VEDANTAM THE WASHINGTON POST

In Arlington, Va., firefighter Bob Gray has the same terrifying dream every few nights. It's Sept. 11, and he finds himself back at the Pentagon, stunned at the inferno of destruction before him and dwarfed by the scale of the damage.

In New York, a 16-year-old Stuy-vesant High School senior who saw one of the World Trade Center towers collapse is convinced that a bomb is about to go off every time his subway train pauses. He's failing in four classes, which now seem utterly unimportant.

While the fear and anxiety that swept the country after the Sept. 11 attacks have subsided for most Americans, hundreds of thousands continue to suffer psychic wounds from that horrific day, according to national mental health experts.

"The majority of people have recovered from the disaster, but there are those who haven't recovered, and there are those who have gotten worse," said Spencer Eth, the top psychiatrist at the St. Vincent Catholic Medical Centers in New York, which has fielded more than 17,000 calls for emotional help.

It is far from clear how many people have psychological problems because of Sept. 11 or how serious those lingering problems are. But there are hints: Two to three months after the attacks, surveys found that nearly half of the residents of Lower Manhattan and as many as one in four Americans nationwide had difficulty sleeping, suffered flashbacks and were easily startled -- symptoms usually found among patients with post-traumatic stress disorder.

The Olympian Copyright 2002

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