World Trade Center: A Case Study

The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center was the largest attack on U.S. soil to date, but it destroyed more than just buildings. It is well known that 2,974 people in lower Manhattan and 343 first responders from the Fire Department of the City of New York were killed in the line of duty. However, it is lesser known that for the next 10 months, until the site closed on July 25, 2002, FDNY workers were continually subjected to dangerous working conditions, fear for the personal safety and were in contact with the victims’ body parts. This is due to the fact that the fire department was a large part of the rescue, recovery and cleanup. Trends of Elevated PTSD Risk in Firefighters Exposed to the World Trade Center Disaster: 2001-2005 by Amy
FDNY-WTC-MMP, which stands for the Fire Department of New York World Trade Center Medical Monitoring Program, used health evaluations consisting of a physical exam by a physician and self administered questionnaires consisting of question pertaining to the WTC site, physical health symptoms, mental health symptoms, and other variables that were ongoing and scheduled every 12 to 18 months to obtain information about rescue workers. It is important to note that only a trained clinician can determine PTSD, therefore it was not possible to diagnose any participants of this study as having PTSD. Since the outcome of this study was based on self-administered questionnaires and a confirmatory diagnosis cannot be made, participants were studied to determine an “elevated risk.” The term “elevated risk” has been used in previous studies to determine those who may be at an increased risk of developing a mental health condition like PTSD. This study required two different conditions to be satisfied on the questionnaires to score positive for elevated PTSD risk. The first condition required a minimum of two affirmative responses to the arousal domain of the questionnaire, at least one affirmative response to the re-experience domain, and a minimum of three affirmative responses to the avoidance/numbing domain. The second condition was a summation of at least 9
A total of 1,402 personnel retired with a disability, 58 of which were a psychological disability. Of the 8,679 participants that were still employed at the conclusion of the study, 9.8% reported symptoms sufficient enough to show an elevated risk of PTSD in the first year. 9.9% reported symptoms in year 2, 11.7% showed symptoms in year 3, and 10.6% showed symptoms in year 4. Also, 15.5% reported difficulty functioning at home or work in year 1, 17.2% reported difficulty in year 2, 15.4% reported difficulty in year 3, and 14% reported difficulty in year 4. Work-related stressors, including the loss of firefighter coworkers, were also associated with an elevated risk of PTSD in 1,663