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CNN Live Sunday

Interview With Dr. Mary Courtney

Aired June 02, 2002 - 18:12   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CATHERINE CALLAWAY, CNN ANCHOR: The tragic events in New York on and after September 11 appear to have taken a serious toll on the mental health of the city's children, and Dr. Mary Courtney is director of the School Partnership Program at the New York University Child Study Center. She's here to talk to us about that and also the results of a study commissioned by the New York City public schools. Thank you so much for being with us. Can you hear me?

MARY COURTNEY, PH.D, NY CHILD STUDY CENTER: Yes, I can.

CALLAWAY: Now the study that was done had some results that to me weren't that surprising, considering what these children have been through. I know it was done six months after 9/11, some 75,000 kids still with symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder?

COURTNEY: That's right.

CALLAWAY: What other things did you find in the study?

COURTNEY: Well there are a number of things. Children react different ways to stresses in their life. A high number of children are showing symptoms of agoraphobia or separation anxiety. If you think about it, we're a city that travels subways in public places, and it's a source of stress for them, also depression, also some acting out.

CALLAWAY: When you say acting out, you mean in classrooms? They're seeing this in the classrooms there?

COURTNEY: Well, one common response to trauma is grumpiness and irritability and many of our children wonder why should I bother? What should I do? And they may have given up or are acting out in the classroom or on the streets.

CALLAWAY: Tell me how the study was conducted.

COURTNEY: Well that study was done by the New York City Board of Education in conjunction with a number of mental health providers from different institutions, including the NYU Child Study Center, and the idea was to get a good scientifically valid basis to understand who is reacting, what parts of the city are children in, their concentrations of bad reactions, what children -- how many children are receiving help, and what kind of symptom pictures are they showing? CALLAWAY: Did you really see any surprises in this and do you think that enough is being done to help these children, because clearly according to this study, there are children in stress there?

COURTNEY: Well it is a huge problem. There are 1.2 million children in the New York City Board of Education. An overwhelming majority are doing fine, but some of them are not and I think that mental health providers of all stripes and types in the city are working very hard to reach these children.

It's hard sometimes to identify them. Sometimes you don't know what's causing the problem. Many of our children are silent sufferers. They look OK until you really talk to them.

CALLAWAY: I want to get everyone some of the numbers that this study gave us and they are disturbing. I know we said the 75,000, that's more than ten percent, are suffering from some symptoms of post traumatic disorder. Also, 60,000, that's more than eight percent, have symptoms of major depression, and I think there's 107,000 children that were showing symptoms of fearful of going out into public, taking transportation and those type of things, right?

COURTNEY: Absolutely, and I think that those figures are accurate. The science was very carefully done a sampling process and it does fit what we are seeing in the children in the schools.

CALLAWAY: So what's going to happen this summer, Mary, kids out of school? There's not going to be that attention placed on the children as would be placed in a classroom. What's being done or have we seen anything being done for the children now that summer is here and we have July 4 coming up, celebrations, and that type of thing?

COURTNEY: Well, things are being done. There are summer programs being developed and many of our children will do normal summer activities, go to camp or study or do some kind of summer job.

What we need to do is reach to the parents and have them aware that there may be trigger points in the summer, the Fourth of July explosions may not be all fun for some children, all through the country, not just here, that there may be more issues around separation at camp and we need to make plans so that children can communicate with their parents and be assured that they are safe and everything is OK.

An extensive effort is to reach out so that the parents, the adults around them, the teachers and educators can all work together to help the children understand what's happening to them and to identify those who are either acting out or silent suffering and giving them to appropriate mental services.

CALLAWAY: And while you were speaking, we were giving some of the statistics from that study on the screen, and something that I found surprising was that the younger children, the fourth and the fifth graders were showing more signs of having problems than the older children, the sixth to twelfth graders. Is that typical in any type of stressful event like this, because you always assume that the younger children overcome things more quickly?

COURTNEY: Well, there's a belief that little children don't worry or don't get upset and it actually is incorrect. In other sites of disaster and trauma, the younger children are often the children who seem most traumatized. They're very sensitive to the adults around them and have less capacity to explain what happened to themselves.

CALLAWAY: Dr. Mary Courtney, thank you for coming and sharing your thoughts with us tonight, this afternoon, and I guess we should all be keeping a very close watch on our children, especially in light of 9/11. Thank you very much for being with us today.

COURTNEY: Thank you.

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