Study Finds High Ground Zero Stress

Study Finds High Ground Zero Stress
By ANTHONY DePALMA
Published: May 21, 2008
A new study by the Mount Sinai School of Medicine suggests that the percentage of ground zero workers who suffered post-traumatic stress is roughly the same as for airline crash recovery workers and returning Afghanistan war veterans.

The study of 10,132 workers, published in the scientific journal Environmental Health Perspectives and released Tuesday, showed that roughly one in 10 rescue and recovery workers who toiled at the site of the destroyed World Trade Center in 2001 and 2002 reported disturbing flashbacks and recurring nightmares.

The results are based on self-reported symptoms provided by workers when they filled out a questionnaire during the study period, which began 10 months after the twin towers collapsed and continued for five years.

Workers with post-traumatic stress reported experiencing symptoms associated with the disorder — intrusive memories, insomnia and numbness of emotions — in the month before they were interviewed.

The study also found that stress can exacerbate a range of medical conditions, including heart, lung, stomach and autoimmune disorders, caused by environmental exposures.

Of the workers who participated in the study, 11.1 percent met the scientific criteria for probable post-traumatic stress. That is about the same percentage as for returning war veterans and is significantly higher than the 3 to 4 percent found in the general adult population.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/21/nyregion/21mental.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion&oref=slogin

Their bodies walked away,,,,,,,

but their minds never left.

With PTSD, they travel back in time. They see it all as if time became a magnet pulling them back to the event that changed them in an instant. The smell of the debris returns. The sounds of the crunching under their feet, the sounds of the equipment running, the voices of their friends, all of it reverberates in their ears. They feel their strength being drained from them, muscles ache from being tightened under the stress of the urgency. The disbelief of what they witnessed returns. It's like a horror movie replaying over and over again, only with this, they are there.

We are all just humans. No matter how much training provided to do jobs very few are willing to do, no training can dehumanize any of us enough to be untouched, unmoved, unchanged.

Soldiers train to kill but no one can train them to escape all that makes them human.

Police officers are trained to protect citizens and often this places their own life in danger. They are placed in positions when they have to make a life or death decision, but often they cannot simply deal with what comes after.

Firefighters and emergency responders, are trained to rescue and take care of citizens but there is no amount of training that can make them immune to the carnage they find after an accident or after a fire.

So how is it that so few of us understand what any of them go through? Is it because we depend on them to take care of us that we forget they sometimes need someone to take care of them?