Study: PTSD Afflicts 1 in 8 WTC Rescuers

Three years after the September 11, 2001, attacks, one in eight rescue workers who responded to the World Trade Center site suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, according to new data.

Overall, 12.4% workers developed PTSD, an anxiety disorder, according to data released yesterday by the Department of Health and published online in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

"Post-traumatic stress disorder can be devastating, affecting people's families and work lives," the city's health commissioner, Dr. Thomas Frieden, said in a statement announcing the new research.

Based on interviews with nearly 30,000 workers who enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Registry, the prevalence of PTSD varied by occupation, according to the study.

It was highest among unaffiliated volunteers, who developed PTSD at a rate of 21.2%, most likely because they lacked experience with previous emergencies, which can mitigate psychological trauma, researchers said.

The lowest prevalence of PTSD, 6.2%, was among police officers. Firefighters developed PTSD twice as often, at a rate of 12.2%. Researchers offered several possibilities for the discrepancy, among them that police officers may have underreported PTSD symptoms and that firefighters' grief over the large numbers of colleagues who died in the attacks compounded the psychological effects of PTSD on those who survived.