Mental Health Consequences of Bioterrorism

2001年9月11日之后的炭疽病毒袭击开启了美国生物恐怖主义威胁的新时代。这个新领域的出现，并没有现有的关于生物恐怖主义对心理健康影响的系统数据库来指导我们国家对它的反应。在制定解决生物恐怖主义心理影响的干预措施时，工作人员和政策制定者最多只能从其他类型的恐怖主义和其他类型的灾难的信息中进行推断，而这些信息可能不适合实际情况。在生物恐怖主义独特的隐蔽恐怖主义的特殊形式中，受害者往往不知道自己的暴露状态。这分离了个体感知暴露于代理人的心理和行为反应。因此，生物恐怖主义给个人带来的心理健康风险是不可预测的，因为这种风险伴随着未知的变量，而不是人们不太了解的暴露。我们经验丰富的灾难研究小组提议对最近发生在国会山的生物恐怖袭击对心理健康的影响进行新的研究。在每年立法相对平静的时期，当受影响的人群最容易参与研究时，我们处于独特的地位，可以对接触国会山人群的狭窄窗口做出反应。这项为期一年的研究将首先与国会山办公室的工作人员进行焦点小组讨论，以确定研究的相关问题。由此获得的信息将用于制定关于生物恐怖主义对心理健康影响的访谈，并将对国会山的200名工作人员进行随机抽样。这项研究将产生关于生物恐怖主义的心理健康反应的宝贵信息，并将为帮助专业人员应对这次和未来事件的受影响受害者的心理健康问题提供经验基础。

The anthrax attacks subsequent to September 11, 2001 ushered in a new2 era of bioterrorism threat in the United States. This new area has arrived with no existing systematic database on the mental health effects of bioterrorism to guide our nation's response to it. In developing interventions to address psychological effects of bioterrorism, workers and policymakers can at best only extrapolate from information about other kinds of terrorism and other types of disasters, which may not fit the situation. In the special form of stealth terrorism that makes bioterrorism unique, victims often don't know their exposure status. This disarticulates psychological and behavior response from individuals' perceived exposure to the agent. As a result, mental health risks to individuals from bioterrorism are unpredictable because the risk follows unknown variables other than exposure that are not well understood. Our highly experienced disaster research team proposes to establish new research on the mental health effects of the recent bioterrorism attacks on Capitol Hill. We are unique positioned to respond to a narrow window of access to the exposed Capitol Hill population during the annual period of relative legislative quiet, when the affected population is most available to participate in research. This proposed one-year study will start by conducting focus groups with Capitol Hill office staff to identify the relevant issues for study. The information thus obtained will be used to develop interviews about the mental health effects of bioterrorism, to be administered to a random sample of 200 staff workers across Capitol Hill. This research will yield valuable information on mental health responses to bioterrorism and will provide an empirical basis for helping professionals responding to the mental health issues of the affected victims of this and future incidents.