Therapy after Terror
9/11, Psychotherapists, and Mental Health

AUTHOR: Karen M. Seeley



Therapy After Terror examines the 2001 World Trade Center attack from the perspectives of New York City mental health professionals who treated the psychologically wounded following the attack. Therapists discuss the attack’s effects on their patients, its personal and professional consequences for them, and the ways it challenged fundamental aspects of clinical theory and practice. The book describes crisis mental health services that were established after the attack, as well as longer-term treatments. It also examines notions of trauma, diagnostic procedures, and the politics of psychological treatment. Karen M. Seeley is a social worker and psychotherapist who teaches in the Anthropology Department at Columbia University. Utilizing her unique interdisciplinary background she provides a detailed study of the post-9/11 mental health crisis, including depictions of the restricted “hot spots” such as the Lexington Avenue Armory, Family Assistance Centers, and Respite Centers at Ground Zero, where mental health workers delivered aid.

• Therapists' eyewitness and ethnographic descriptions of various service centers after 9/11
• Critical analyses of notions of trauma, concepts of PTSD, psychiatric diagnosis, and mental health practices
• The social implications and political uses of psychiatric categories