Terrorism and Trauma Study

This award supports the completion of a longitudinal study of the mental and physical health effects of terrorism and trauma, which was started before September 11, 2001. Initial health data on most of the 2,500 study subjects was collected prior to the attacks and the same individuals have been followed at six-month intervals through March of 2003. Because of the study design, Alison Holman, PhD and her team were able to assess the psychological impact of the Iraq War on almost 1,400 of the study participants during a 110-day period in March of 2003. Response rates from each of the data collections have ranged from 75 to 91 percent.

The National Science Foundation initially funded the study but that funding has ended. Findings from the first six months were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on September 11, 2002. The Macy award makes it possible to take advantage of the study population to document more fully the mental and physical health responses to trauma and terror.