Finding Resilience, 25 Years After 1993 World Trade Center Bombing- Sharon Otterman

For five and a half hours on February 26, 1993, Carl Selinger was trapped alone in an elevator at the World Trade Center, wondering if the smoke seeping in from the elevator shaft would kill him. Unaware it was a terror attack that had left him stranded; he spent the first hour writing a goodbye letter to his family on a piece of loose-leaf paper. The event last week at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum is one of several this month dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the bombing, focused on the long-term effects of trauma, and featured psychiatrists and survivors of the 1993 attack. Rachel Yehuda, PhD, professor of psychiatry and neuroscience and director of the division of traumatic stress studies at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, speaking at a panel, said each person handles trauma differently. "On the one hand, you have people who will be quite resilient, and who will reflect on what could have happened but didn't, and try to get a life lesson or object lesson going, and try to use the event somehow in a positive way," Dr. Yehuda said. "At the other extreme are people who remain very frightened, very overwhelmed." And of course, there is a range of reactions in the middle, she said.

• Rachel Yehuda, PhD, Professor, Psychiatry, Neuroscience, Director, Division of Traumatic Stress Studies, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
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