Mental Health and 9/11
15 years and counting. How much time has to go by for us to feel whole again, to feel mentally healthy? Is wholeness even possible? I don’t know. I wasn’t even there and it still impacts me all these years later. How much more does it impact the survivors, the family of the lost, and the first respondents who searched and performed recovery?
One of the biggest obstacles for mental healthiness about 9/11 is the visuals we all saw, and so many experienced. People have moved on, there is no choice there, but it has never been and will never be forgotten. After all that is what the memorial is for. To help us never forget. Never forgetting can contribute to ongoing mental health issues in some ways. In 2002 a survey was done by the Journal of the American Medical Association. The survey revealed that some of the general population was experiencing trauma from 9/11. The more coverage a person watched, the higher the likelihood of them experiencing some form of PTSD.
At ten years videos were run about that day. I remember watching them and feeling a severe amount of anxiety and stress. I was not alone. Many people have compared their ongoing response to the memories to what soldiers and non-combatants experience with PTSD. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder can happen from a lot of different triggers and circumstances. Having said all of this, not everyone struggles with PTSD. Many have processed it and dealt with it emotionally and moved on in a very healthy way.
Though I still feel an emotional imbalance, and a level of trauma from it, it only emerges when I spend any time reading about it, or if I see video’s of it. Because of this, I cannot watch the coverage of it anymore. I have had to start processing that day differently by focusing on the people, and what is being done to help them. I cannot handle the sorrow anymore. It adds to my emotional trauma. So, what are healthcare professionals doing to help people deal with 9/11 trauma?
One of the first things health professionals have done is identify the need for ongoing research. There are similarities between psychological responses for any type of large scale disaster, but 9/11 added a component for American’s that we hadn’t culturally dealt with. The component of terrorism changed how mental health researchers and providers address stress and trauma. They also realized it was far more widespread than just the survivors or families of those lost. It stretched to people who weren’t even there.
One of the biggest tools for recovery is creating safe environments for those struggling as they work through the fear, anxiety, and traumatic events stuck in their memories. Part of creating that safe environment is helping people understand that their anxiety is a normal response to the trauma they experienced, and that time needed to process it is common. Many people ignore their feeling regarding trauma and actually unintentionally delay their own emotional healing. It is thought that those who simply saw the events from a distance should be recovered at this point. Most people would agree with this, but people like me, who saw it and followed that coverage for days, but never really dealt with the emotions, but stuffed them, would be an exception to that thinking.
Mental health providers are working with patients to process emotions left unattended for a long time. A resurgence of doctor’s visits surrounding an anniversary is common. It doesn’t take long to work through the emotions, but it is an ongoing need that makes providers mindful that healthiness takes time, and isn’t as simple as distance equals healing. Walking people through the trauma, helping them feel safe to share, and reasonably safe to go on and simply allowing people to be honest about still feeling that emotional pull goes a long way to helping people walk down a road to recovery that frees them from the emotional ties to the tragedy.
Image obtained from onenewspage.us. Survey facts obtained through a survey done by JAMA in 2002.
