Long-term Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms Among 3,271 Civilian Survivors of the September 11, 2001, Terrorist Attacks on the World Trade Center

Laura DiGrande · Yuval Neria · Robert M. Brackbill · Paul Pulliam · Sandro Galea

180 citations0/0 files storedAmerican Journal of Epidemiology

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Research Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence COVID-19 and Mental Health

Abstract

Although the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were the largest human-made disaster in US history, there is little extant research documenting the attacks' consequences among those most directly affected, that is, persons who were in the World Trade Center towers. Data from a cross-sectional survey conducted 2-3 years after the attacks ascertained the prevalence of long-term, disaster-related posttraumatic stress symptoms and probable posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in 3,271 civilians who evacuated World Trade Center towers 1 and 2. Overall, 95.6% of survivors reported at least 1 current posttraumatic stress symptom. The authors estimated the probable rate of PTSD at 15.0% by using the PTSD Checklist. Women and minorities were at an increased risk of PTSD. A strong inverse relation with annual income was observed. Five characteristics of direct exposure to the terrorist attacks independently predicted PTSD: being on a high floor in the towers, initiating evacuation late, being caught in the dust cloud that resulted from the tower collapses, personally witnessing horror, and sustaining an injury. Working for an employer that sustained fatalities also increased risk. Each addition of an experience of direct exposure resulted in a 2-fold increase in the risk of PTSD (odds ratio = 2.09, 95% confidence interval: 1.84, 2.36). Identification of these risk factors may be useful when screening survivors of large-scale terrorist events for long-term psychological sequelae.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 180 citations exist upstream.

References

2013Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 2005Lifetime Prevalence and Age-of-Onset Distributions of DSM-IV Disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication 2005Prevalence, Severity, and Comorbidity of 12-Month DSM-IV Disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication 1995Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in the National Comorbidity Survey 2002Psychological Sequelae of the September 11 Terrorist Attacks in New York City 2001A National Survey of Stress Reactions after the September 11, 2001, Terrorist Attacks 2007Post-traumatic stress disorder following disasters: a systematic review 2002Nationwide Longitudinal Study of Psychological Responses to September 11

Cited by

2011Short-term and medium-term health effects of 9/11 2011Postdisaster psychological intervention since 9/11.2014World Trade Center Disaster Exposure-Related Probable Posttraumatic Stress Disorder among Responders and Civilians: A Meta-Analysis 20179/11-related PTSD among highly exposed populations: a systematic review 15 years after the attack 2011

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.