Previous chapters described the particular difficulties New York City mental health professionals encountered, and the overall inadequacies of their field, in responding to the World Trade Center attack. Yet before mental health professionals were able to complete the necessary project of addressing such deficiencies, they found themselves under pressure to prepare for future attacks on American ground. This concluding chapter examines their varied attempts to meet the urgent and unfamiliar demands posed by the arrival of international political terror in their midst. After discussing emerging plans for mental health preparedness, it examines significant and lingering uncertainties within the mental health field concerning the psychological impacts of the attack, the treatment of trauma-related disorders, and the definition of post-traumatic stress disorder. It then explores mental health professionals' efforts to make their work more relevant to these traumatic times by revising clinical assumptions, altering therapeutic practices, and reformulating notions of social and political responsibility.

ARE WE PREPARED?

As the fifth anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center approached, the events of September 11, 2001, remained very much in the news.