Children’s Mental Health After 9/11 and the Boston Marathon Bombing

Abstract

Terrorism directly impacts an enormous number of children and adolescents each year, and by definition, the explicit goals of terrorism extend beyond causing death, injury, and the destruction of property. An increasing body of research finds that direct and indirect terrorism exposure can be associated with a very heavy mental health toll in a sizable proportion of exposed youth. This chapter reviews what our research group and our research partners have learned from focused studies examining children and adolescents in the aftermath of the 2001 9/11 attack and the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. These studies have identified population-based rates of psychopathology in terrorism-exposed youth and have helped move the field beyond a relatively exclusive focus of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms by also documenting elevated rates of anxiety, depression, and even externalizing problems in this population. These studies have also (a) highlighted the considerable effects that subsequent attack-related life disruptions—such as economic hardships and disrupted infrastructure—can have on youth mental health; (b) charted the effects that media-based exposure (e.g., exposure to television, the Internet, and/or social media coverage of terrorism events) can have on youth mental health; (c) clarified the critical role that parents and teachers can play in helping youth make sense of and process terrorism; and (d) identified particularly vulnerable subgroups of children following terrorist attacks, such as children of first responders and children with prior exposure to community violence. We conclude with a discussion of important future directions in research on terrorism-exposed youth, as well as how findings from studies conducted in the wake of the 9/11 attack and the Boston Marathon bombing can inform the optimal allocation of limited mental health resources following future terrorist events.