Counselors combat disaster for themselves, students

When Lesli Myers learned that two planes had crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, she knew that she had not yet met the day's most difficult challenge. A school counselor and administrator at Wilson Magnet High School in Rochester, Myers was still composing herself after a traumatic episode with a student moments earlier when a colleague told her about the attack on the twin towers. After a quick call to her sister, who teaches social studies in another city school, Myers began bracing the counseling staff for the chaos the news would likely generate. She knew that the effects of such a catastrophic event would reverberate well beyond Ground Zero, and that she and her colleagues in counseling would be called upon to help students, staff, and families deal with the events of the day.

"Our first concern was for students who might have relatives or close friends in New York City," Myers recalls. And there was some of that. As news of the tragedy was delivered to each classroom via a letter from the principal, distressed students began arriving in counselors' offices.

"There was a lot of crying," Myers says, ''as students wondered 'Is my mom OK, my uncle, my brother?' " In addition to concerns about loved ones, there was a lot of fear about what the immediate and long-term threat to Rochester might be. "Some students were completely overwhelmed," she says. "Some even wondered, 'Is this it?' " Add to this turmoil concerned parents rushing to pick up their kids as the result of a miscommunication that city schools were closing early, and you have the makings of a very hectic day.

Renee Weller ('01, M.S.) says that the reaction of students at Mirton Williams Middle School in the nearby suburb of Hilton, was considerably more subdued. "We saw less of a response from students than we expected," she says, "and more of a response from teachers, who wanted to watch the television coverage all day long, and parents who called in to express concern that their kids weren't nervous enough."

Such a wide range of responses is to be expected when disasters occur, says Jerry Rubenstein ('70, Ed.D.), a private practitioner and adjunct professor at the Warner School who specializes in helping people work through the adverse effects of stressful and traumatic life experiences. How students respond will vary as a function of age and comprehension, their own trauma history, and the cues they receive from others around them, he explains. If the adults who shape their world are open to helping children and adolescents make sense of catastrophic events like September 11 and encourage them to work through their fears, most students will regain a sense of equilibrium and well-being fairly quickly.

Students with a history of violence or abuse at home, however, may require additional support. Rubenstein urges teachers and counselors to watch for cues in students' work and play that exhibit lingering anxieties about the bombings and subsequent events. One teacher told him that Santa's sleigh crashing was a common theme in the Christmas stories in 2001. Another told of a student who was collecting images of the twin towers before they collapsed.

Myers reports that a sense of relative calm was restored at Wilson within a day or two after the attack, and that many students turned their focus toward community service in the weeks following. "I think students here are a little more conscious of just how precious life is and that the future is not guaranteed," she observes. Even so, Myers and her colleagues remain alert and accessible both in the halls and within the community. When warranted, they make home-based visits to families and pull at-risk students into their offices to calm them.

Weller says that she and her colleagues at Mirton Williams are "more vigilant than ever to pick up on signs of anxiety that might be related to the attack." She says they haven't seen much of an increased need, and those they are seeing are the "same bunch" who frequent the counseling office in less extraordinary times.

"It's important not to minimize the symtomatology of people who are not directly affected by tragedy," says Jack Herrmann ('89, M.S.), New York State's volunteer mental health lead for the American Red Cross. Herrmann spent 11 days at Ground Zero, leading efforts to provide mental health relief close to the scene until the national team arrived, and then coordinating mental health services at the Family Assistance Center before returning to his paying job as an administrator and faculty associate in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Herrmann notes that since catastrophic events can trigger emotions related to past traumas, it's important to examine an individual's trauma history and other stresses to understand the underlying sources for extreme reactions.

Herrmann also cautions counselors to bear in mind that they aren't immune to the effects of trauma themselves. "The nature of this tragedy challenged all of our protective thoughts," says Herrmann. "It raised everyone's level of vulnerability.

"Most mental health professionals get into the business to help others, but they do so at some peril to themselves," he warns. Sustained efforts to support others through crisis can place counselors at risk of vicarious traumitization (also called compassion fatigue, empathetic strain, or simply burnout), which can cause them to experience the same anxieties as victims, such as sleeplessness, nightmares, mood changes, or changes in interest levels.

Studies of the Oklahoma City bombing indicate that children were still experiencing anxieties related to that a year later. "We have not yet begun to realize the long-term effects of this incident on people's lives," Herrmann believes, especially with closure nowhere in sight.