Stress, Crisis Counselors Called to Soothe Distraught Workers

A month after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, demand remains high for stress and crisis counselors to soothe workers’ frayed nerves, even at companies with little direct connection to the events.

The need for services has surged still more with last week’s airstrikes in Afghanistan, coupled with layoffs and fears of additional attacks, mental health professionals say.

The terrorist attacks have created lingering psychological damage that is more difficult to contain than that from other sorts of crises, said Steve Froehlich, a Los Angeles psychotherapist.

“These things typically have a beginning and an ending,” he said. “What we’re dealing with now is just this uncertain future. We don’t know what’s coming, and that just keeps everyone in a hyper-vigilant or an anxious condition.”

Traditionally, companies summon crisis counselors to help pockets of employees cope with bank robberies, workplace shootings or other isolated traumatic events. Since Sept. 11, these counselors are seeing a wider range of people over an extended period of time, offering reassurance, teaching coping skills and telling employees that their feelings are normal.

Last week, counselors at Alameda, Calif.-based Claremont Partners, which provides employee assistance services, visited a dye manufacturing facility, a health-care products maker and a firm that provides home health services to patients.

“Some people are just having a lot of trouble getting back to normal,” said Froehlich, who also serves as chairman of the disaster mental health team for the Los Angeles chapter of the American Red Cross. “They don’t want to come into work. They don’t want to leave their families.”

Employees Learn They Are Not Alone

United Behavioral Health, a large provider of employee assistance programs, has conducted more than 2,000 help sessions with employees nationwide in the last four weeks, compared with 40 or 50 in a typical month. The sessions, called “critical incident stress debriefings,” allow people to discuss their feelings and learn that they are not alone.

“This is the most painful event that we and others like us have ever had to respond to,” said Saul Feldman, chief executive of United Behavioral Health, based in San Francisco.

Owensboro Municipal Utilities in Kentucky said its session helped employees cope with their fears.

People were upset even though the closest connection any had to the disasters was an employee with a brother in Manhattan. He was not harmed in the attacks.

“We’ve been doing a lot of talking,” said Sue Napper, director of administrative services. It’s “an outlet to be around friends and co-workers and talk about the situation.”

The need is greatest, however, closer to the terrorist targets.

At Computer Associates, on-site counseling sessions were held last week for Manhattan workers who returned Monday to their offices near the collapsed World Trade Center site.

“Some of them hadn’t seen each other since Sept. 11” because they were working out of different offices, said Dori White, vice president for human resources. “There was a reunion and it was emotional.”

Counseling sessions aren’t the only way for employees to seek help.

After hosting a grief session Sept. 12, the San Francisco Ballet encouraged employees to call a help line for additional assistance.

“This isn’t something that goes away instantly,” said Cecelia Beam, employee relations manager for the ballet. “It’s something that we have to live with for a while, and people are going to deal with this in different ways.”

Claremont Partners has received an increase in calls by people threatening suicide or contemplating it, President Suzanne Gelber said. She said the attacks seem to have exacerbated existing emotional problems.

Hotlines Fielding More and More Calls

The calls received Tuesday included one from a terrified West Indian transportation worker who had received a death threat.

“Normally he would have tossed off this comment and chalked it off to another crazy person,” Gelber said. “Now, he doesn’t know whether to take it seriously.”

United Behavioral Health said it has received 74,000 phone calls to its hotlines since Sept. 11, compared with its average of 55,500 calls over four weeks.

“While most people are not saying that they’re calling because of what happened, about half of them are mentioning it,” Feldman said. The public can access coping guides on the company’s Web site at https://www.ubhnet.com.

Some counseling companies are finding that their own staff members are becoming overwhelmed and need counseling themselves.

“We have set up a whole process of debriefing our debriefers,” said Bill Barr, a senior vice president at Magellan Behavioral Health. “This is almost like a tour of duty.”