WASHINGTON, Oct 05, 2001 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- The efforts of mental health professionals who flocked to New York on a mission to ease the anguish of survivors, rescue workers and witnesses are mostly ineffective and could do real harm, a University of Arkansas psychologist warned.

"We should respond to the people who have experienced this atrocity as a community disaster," Jeffrey Lohr said in a phone interview.

"The shock, depression and anger are normal human reactions.

"We should be very careful about responding to people who got in harm's way as if they are now somehow psychopathological," the professor said.

Lohr said mental health practitioners should resist their predisposition to "medicalize, pathologize or otherwise trivialize people" who have suffered emotional assault.

Only a relatively small proportion will suffer long-term damage, he said.

"Unless and until identifiable symptoms can be manifested, we should respond to the disaster as community psychologists rather than as clinical psychologists -- or not as psychologists at all but citizens who want to help citizens."

Lohr believes it is too early for people to benefit from psychological therapy.

Studies indicate that some 20 percent of combat survivors later develop a resulting psychiatric disorder. However, "symptoms don't manifest right away," Lohr said. "Therefore, they can't be treated right away."

A cottage industry has grown in the past 15 years of well-intentioned people who rush into disasters "with the purpose of preventing, or inoculating, unfortunate souls against future psychological disorder."

However, he said, scientific research shows that groups of individuals who receive what he called "critical incident stress debriefing" get "no prophylactic affect."

This treatment -- usually applied in group sessions shortly after disasters -- requires survivors to re-live and discuss the details of their traumatic experiences. Lohr said that CISD sessions began in New York on Sept. 11 despite the fact that recent scientific testing shows no measurable benefit and indicates that the treatment actually heightens trauma in some people.

"Oftentimes mental health practitioners don't believe they can do harm," he told United Press International.

Just days after the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, Lohr joined 20 colleagues from around the world in drafting a letter to the American Psychological Association journal, Monitor on Psychology. It expressed sympathy for those suffering as a result of the attacks, but it also urged mental health professionals to refrain from forcing treatment during this time of natural grief and horror. Further, the letter warned therapists against intervening in ways that could trigger or exacerbate later trauma.

As the days and weeks pass, other pseudoscientific treatments filter into the disaster areas, Lohr said, some with even greater potential for detrimental effects. The developers of trendy treatments such as Emotional Freedom Therapy, Thought Field Therapy and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing have treated the terrorist attacks as a summons -- attempting to apply their methods to as many victims as possible.

"I've seen e-mail messages and Internet postings in which the promoters of these fringe treatments are poised to move into New York and are looking for introductions," Lohr said. "They're using the disaster as a way to insinuate themselves into the programs and procedures of emergency service personnel."

For more than four years, Lohr has focused his research efforts on debunking pseudoscientific psychological therapies. He serves as president of the Science and Pseudoscience Review Special Interest Group of the Association for Advancement of Behavior Therapy and has published several articles on pseudoscientific treatments.

He cautions that even those pseudoscientific treatments shown to cause no detrimental effects may impede recovery simply because they take the place of scientifically sound, effective therapies.

Rather than forcing therapy on people who don't really need it, Lohr said other forms of support and counseling may be more appropriate. For those with spiritual beliefs, he recommends visiting their religious leaders.

He also suggested that sharing emotions between family and friends could help mitigate the anguish and fear of this difficult time. Such simple, inexpensive actions have a tremendous impact on recovery, he said.

But Lohr also stressed that he is not trying to discourage people from seeking psychiatric help if they believe they need it. For individuals who feel their reactions have been more intense or more prolonged than is healthy, Lohr recommended they approach a licensed mental health practitioner.

Waiting for symptoms to develop is especially important in the case of children, Lohr said.

"If parents see an otherwise ebullient child reacting to these events by being withdrawn, crying excessively, sleeping poorly or lashing out in anger, then -- and only then -- it's time to seek advice," he said.

"Trying to apply therapy when you haven't noticed such symptoms would be very ill-advised. You can't give your child a psychological inoculation."

From Healthy.ent