The 24 months after the September 11, 2001, attacks have provided lessons about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which causes symptoms from apathy to physical illness.

The accepted wisdom is that people who have been traumatized react more excessively to new stressful events compared with people who have avoided trauma. So Yale University's Robert A. Rosenheck and Alan Fontana tracked the use of mental health services at Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Oklahoma City for the six months before and six months after 9/11. After the attacks, there was no significant rise in the use of VA services by new patients or by those already diagnosed with PTSD or other mental illnesses.

This article was originally published with the title Mitigating Trauma.

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