This volume aims to capture something of the extraordinary breadth and depth of mental health services and research that followed the September 11 attacks – efforts that were often happening simultaneously and in isolation from one another. It is a kind of documentary of the post-9/11 mental health responses. We also hope that this book serves as a partial remedy to the fragmentary nature of mental health services and research in the USA, and in particular, after all large-scale disasters. It is multi-disciplinary, such that most readers will encounter perspectives on mental health, community, or disaster theory that are foreign to their professional point of view. Although cooperation and tolerance after disaster are ubiquitous, there are also bitter rivalries and fierce struggles for scarce resources. Disaster can evoke the best, and the worst, in any community. We hope that this book and others like it will help to counteract the often tribalistic rivalry of the disciplines presented herein and encourage efforts to communicate effectively, toward genuine collaboration after future disasters.

The psychological aftermath of 9/11

What sets the post-9/11 epidemiologic work apart from prior disaster studies is its scope and methodology, a methodology that reflects a shift in balancing the often competing needs of scientific rigor and timely implementation. Rapidly implemented large-scale studies like these are extremely difficult to do, but serve a crucial humanitarian purpose in that they can inform program development in the early weeks of a disaster.