We wish to thank the collaboration among the New York City Department of Education, Applied Research Consulting LLC, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, and New York State Psychiatric Institute for allowing us to use their measure of the impact of 9/11 on New York City public school children. We also wish to thank Irene Strum and Henry Solomon at the New York City Department of Education for their assistance in maintaining contact with this longitudinal sample, and to thank Jim Mercy and Rodney Hammond in the Division of Violence Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for helping secure supplemental funding for a module of questions related to 9/11. This work was conducted while the authors were employed at the National Center for Children in Poverty, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, and was funded through grants from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention through the Columbia Center for Youth Violence Prevention (CCR218598) and from the National Institute of Mental Health (1R01MH63685) awarded to the first and second authors.
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Exposure to 9/11 Among Youth and Their Mothers in New York City: Enduring Associations With Mental Health and Sociopolitical Attitudes
Article first published online: 15 JUL 2010
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01459.x
© 2010, Copyright the Author(s). Journal Compilation © 2010, Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.
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How to Cite
Gershoff, E. T., Aber, J. L., Ware, A. and Kotler, J. A. (2010), Exposure to 9/11 Among Youth and Their Mothers in New York City: Enduring Associations With Mental Health and Sociopolitical Attitudes. Child Development, 81: 1142–1160. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01459.x
Publication History
- Issue published online: 15 JUL 2010
- Article first published online: 15 JUL 2010
- Abstract
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The enduring impact of exposure to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on mental health and sociopolitical attitudes was examined in a sample of 427 adolescents (M = 16.20 years) and their mothers residing in New York City. Direct exposure to the terrorist attack was associated with youth depression symptoms and with mothers’ posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms. There was no evidence of reciprocal effects of mother exposure on youth or of youth exposure on mothers. Although mothers reported engaging in more emotional processing coping assistance with their children, coping assistance was not associated with youth’s symptomatology. Media exposure was found to be a strong predictor of youth’s and mothers’ sociopolitical attitudes about issues such as prejudice toward immigrants, social mistrust, and current events.