Mental Health Consequences of Bioterrorism

2001年9月11日之后发生的炭疽热袭击事件使美国进入了生物恐怖主义威胁的新时代。在这个新领域，我们还没有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的应对措施，在制定应对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充其量只能从其他类型的恐怖主义和其他类型的灾害的信息中推断，这可能不适合这种情况。在使生物恐怖主义独一无二的隐形恐怖主义的特殊形式中，受害者往往不知道他们的暴露状况。这从个体对代理人的感知暴露中分离出心理和行为反应。因此，生物恐怖主义对个人的心理健康风险是不可预测的，因为风险遵循的是未知的变量，而不是暴露，这些变量还没有得到很好的理解。我们经验丰富的灾难研究小组建议对最近国会山发生的生物恐怖袭击对心理健康的影响进行新的研究。我们处于独特的位置，以应对一个狭窄的窗口访问暴露的国会山人口在每年的立法相对平静的时期，当受影响的人口是最可参与研究。这项拟议的为期一年的研究将首先与国会山办公室工作人员进行重点小组讨论，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，将对国会山的200名工作人员进行随机抽样。 这项研究将产生宝贵的信息，心理健康应对生物恐怖主义，并将提供一个经验基础，帮助专业人员应对心理健康问题的受影响的受害者的这次和未来的事件。

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.