Post-Traumatic Stress Expert Who Treated 9/11 Survivors, Responders Available to Explain Psychiatric Aftermath

Newswise — LOS ANGELES, Aug. 31, 2011 – As the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 World Trade Center terrorist assault approaches, Anand Pandya, MD, a psychiatrist who worked with families and first responders in New York City immediately after the attack, is available to discuss the psychological effects on Ground Zero survivors, first responders and Americans in general.

Pandya is co-author of a study in the September issue of Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, a peer-reviewed medical journal published by the American Medical Association. The study reports on rates and risk factors of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in people who worked at the World Trade Center and survived the terrorist attacks. The study concludes that individuals who were more than a block away from the World Trade Center at the time of the disaster were at dramatically lower risk for developing full PTSD. Complete results from the study are embargoed until Sept. 7.

“So much has been written about how 9/11 affected the nation but very few studies have looked at the people who are at the very center of this tragedy, individuals who confronted life or death situations at Ground Zero,” said Pandya, acting director of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences at Cedars-Sinai. “By following the people who were most directly affected over the long haul, we have data that challenges many of our early assumptions about the impact of this event.”

Trauma survivors are diagnosed with PTSD if they have symptoms such as flashbacks, nighmares and hypervigilance for a month.

Pandya is a co-founder of Disaster Psychiatry Outreach, a nonprofit organization of psychiatrists that has also provided immediate psychiatric medical help to survivors of Hurricane Katrina, the earthquake in Haiti and the Sri Lanka tsunami.