Coping With Crisis

As the U.S. bombed Afghanistan this month, the students of Horace Mann Elementary School in Oak Park, Ill., mounted their own response to terrorism. More than 200 of them ran around the block and through an open field next to the playground, panting, laughing and earning a sticker for each lap they completed in the name of their "Moving Us Forward" program. After a fortnight of morning runs, they cumulatively completed more than 1,000 miles, the distance from their school to the World Trade Center to the Pentagon.

"The people in the plane crashes probably were sweating," said Marisa Belpedio, a ponytailed nine-year-old, gasping for breath. "In the Twin Towers, people were sweating because of the fire. When I'm running, I feel I'm sweating...like I was there with them. That makes me feel better because sometimes I dream that I was in there and I helped the other people before I helped myself." Alexis Momney, a dark-eyed 10-year-old, also found the exercise cathartic. "When I look on TV, all I see is plane crashes and stuff, and I'm scared that a plane will crash into my school. Whenever I run, it helps me to have a clear mind."

Horace Mann's run-a-thon to raise money for the victims is among the thousands of ways that schools across the nation are coping with the stress of the Sept. 11 attacks and their aftermath. In Tallahassee, Fla., first-graders at Hartsfield Elementary School drew pictures for the President--and gave advice. "Dear George Bush," wrote Ian Pitts. "It's O.K. if you breate [sic] through grey smoke. But if black smokes gets in your lungs you will die." At the Colin Powell Academy for Success in Long Beach, Calif., students wrote to the Secretary of State. "I think we should sign a peace treaty," offered sixth-grader Arlene Lopez. Many schools held bake sales to raise money for disaster-relief funds--helpful to the destitute but also therapeutic for the donors. Esther Giller, director of Maryland's Sidran Traumatic Stress Foundation, advises adults to "encourage children to become involved to overcome their feelings of helplessness."

Not since the 1986 explosion of the Challenger space shuttle, which killed a high school teacher from Concord, N.H., who was a passenger on board, have American students watched such a personal calamity unfold live on television. The Persian Gulf War took place in a distant land. And while the Columbine massacre happened on student turf and was the product of obvious derangement, it did not carry the generalized threat of holy war against all Americans at any time and in any place. The magnitude and spectacle of last month's terrorist attacks means that children far from New York and Washington may feel "a sense of terror and vulnerability they never experienced before," says Bill Steele, director of the Michigan-based National Institute for Trauma and Loss in Children.

For those who saw burning bodies fall from windows, witnessed the collapse of the towers or lost a relative in the attacks, the likelihood of depression and even clinical post-traumatic stress disorder is very high. More than 5,600 students were evacuated from eight schools near the World Trade Center and relocated onto new campuses, some in distant neighborhoods. The logistic hassles and the uncertainty about the future serve to increase their distress. Catie Prendergast, 10, sipping a chocolate milk shake outside her new school two weeks ago, confessed that on a recent night "I had a dream that I saw the planes, and we had to run for our lives."

Experts say children directly involved in the tragedy are likely to experience flashbacks, intense grief and despair. If kids are unable to process the event emotionally, psychologists look for a delayed stress response. Parents and teachers should watch for anxiety, difficulty concentrating, aggressive behavior or withdrawal, stomachaches, headaches and sleeplessness. Regressive behaviors might surface--children sleeping in their parents' bed or with the lights on. Phobias might appear--about airplanes, for instance, or tall buildings. Post-traumatic stress disorder, the most severe form of delayed stress, can occur years later. Similar symptoms, only more intense and longer lasting, require intensive counseling.

"The more personal it is, the stronger the emotional reaction," says psychologist Frederick Medway, a University of South Carolina professor who counseled children during the Gulf War.

Children may be particularly vulnerable if they already suffer from depression, anxiety or other psychiatric disorders--or have experienced other losses, such as a death in the family. In Los Alamos, N.M., a wildfire destroyed the homes of 400 residents in May 2000. After the fire, experts warned Los Alamos High School to look for signs of stress to appear nine to 12 months later.

Indeed, last winter, as if on cue, twice as many students as in normal years came to counselors to talk about symptoms of depression and anxiety. Shortly before graduation last spring, a student committed suicide and another attempted it. Christine Hazard, who supervises the district's psychologists, notes that the American Psychological Association's website www.apa.org ) is distributing trauma information for schools and parents. "They need to have an awareness of the cycle," she says. "There are hard times ahead."