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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

BROOKLYN PSYCHIATRIC CENTERS PRESENTS
CONFERENCE ON CHILDREN AND TRAUMA

BROOKLYN, NY, May 30, 2003—The September 11 terrorist attacks were a watershed event in the way we define ourselves in New York City, the United States, and the world, said Yael Danieli, Ph.D., the keynote speaker at Brooklyn Psychiatric Centers’ conference, “Children and Trauma: Long-Term and Multi-Generational Effects,” which was attended by more than 100 professionals on May 16, 2003, at Brooklyn Borough Hall.

“The challenge is to find the new normal,” said Dr. Danieli, a clinical psychologist in private practice, a victimologist, traumatologist, and director of the Group Project for Holocaust Survivors and their Children, which she founded in 1975 in the New York City area. “We must reassess and find meaning on personal, interpersonal, societal, and international levels. How do we build, work, and live from now on?”

Dr. Danieli said the insecurity caused by the September 11 attacks has been compounded by economic decline, the crisis in civil liberties, lingering threats of terrorism, ongoing wars, and the revelation of abuse in the Catholic Church, all of which have led to feelings of mistrust. September 11 remains pervasive in every layer of life in New York City and in the decisions we make regarding safety in businesses and schools and every day decisions such as whether to travel or not. The central question is how to live with growing levels of threats, anxiety, fear, uncertainty, and loss.

Following the attacks, Dr. Danieli said that survivors of previous traumas in other countries, such as Holocaust survivors, were particularly affected because many immigrants had viewed the United States as the last place of safety. In addition, September 11 reactivated the stress of other traumas and one study of World War II and the Korean War veterans found that following the attacks they experienced post-traumatic stress.

When working with trauma victims, Dr. Danieli said one must examine the person’s past, including the person’s family, social, communal, religious, cultural, national, and international network. Exposure to trauma causes a rupture in the person’s life and the person remains in a state of being stuck. Dr. Danieli said the feeling of being stuck is intensified by the conspiracy of silence, that the person’s trauma is being ignored by society because society’s reaction to trauma is to deny that it exists.

Dr. Danieli said that when she first began studying trauma in the 1960s, she was told that trauma survivors didn’t want to talk about it. When she began interviewing survivors, however, she found that they wouldn’t stop talking, as though they had waited 30 years to speak.

The conspiracy of silence intensifies the individual’s profound sense of isolation and mistrust. Acute stress disorders may become chronic and in the extreme lead to life-long post-traumatic adaptive styles that can affect future generations, she said. Sometimes whole nations behave as if they are traumatized.

Trauma will be experienced differently depending on the individual, the intent behind the act, the developmental stage of the individual, and the duration of the act. Also a family’s reaction to trauma will vary. Some families behave as victims; some are fighters and fight throughout their lifetimes; some remain numb as though they are in shock, and others look like they have assimilated into society but internally they are suffering and, as a result, experience the highest rates of suicide.

When individuals experience trauma, Dr. Danieli said there are three wounds. The first wound is the actual trauma, the second wound is when people who are supposed to care for or listen to the traumatized individual don’t, and the third wound is the one that individuals inflict on themselves by internalizing the second wound. For example, a professional who asked a rape victim what she was wearing at the time of her attack could create a second wound and prompt the individual to change the way she dresses. She said that victim survivors find it helpful to understand that their reaction to the third wound is up to them.

Dr. Danieli has served as consultant to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Rwandan government on reparations for victims, and is leading an ongoing project in Bosnia and Herzegovina. She is a founding director of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies and has been a senior representative to the United Nations of the World Federation for Mental Health and of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. Dr. Danieli has written extensively on post traumatic stress disorder and families.

Yvonne Graham, deputy borough president for Brooklyn greeted the participants at the conference and thanked Brooklyn Psychiatric Centers for organizing it. “All of our lives have been changed since the terrorist attacks,” Ms. Graham said. “The attacks ended our basic sense of security that we have all taken for granted. It is easy to understand that many of the children in our midst may be traumatized.”

Each year Brooklyn Psychiatric Centers presents educational conferences for the therapeutic community that benefit hundreds of professionals. In 2002, the agency presented a conference on “Losses and Resilience: Working with Foster Children in Psychotherapy” and in 2001, it presented “Working with the Chaotic Multi-Problem Family.”

Brooklyn Psychiatric Centers, which was founded in 1907, offers more than 20 quality mental health programs throughout the borough including 14 on-site programs in the public schools, five outpatient mental health clinics in Bushwick, Canarsie, Flatbush-Sheepshead Bay, Williamsburg-Greenpoint, and downtown Brooklyn, a drug and alcohol treatment program, and two programs for seniors. Its staff of more than 100 professionals makes more than 60,000 visits a year.  More information about Brooklyn Psychiatric Centers is available at 718-875-5625.