Across the country children are expressing fear of the future. That is to be expected, considering both what they have witnessed and the anxiety they are picking up from the adults in their lives.

As to adults, besides their own fears, they are worried about the long-term effects on the mental health of children. With no precedent in recent history of an attack on U.S. territory, not to mention one so unsettling about future safety, we must look elsewhere for clues. Studies of the effects of ongoing wars on children are not appropriate, because the attacks on our nation lasted only one day. Neither are the experiences of children in Northern Ireland and the Middle East, colored as they are by their respective histories and cultures. The Cold War, it turns out, gives us parallels that are relevant to the issue of long term mental health effects on American children.

During the Cold War adults were concerned about the mental health consequences of anxiety induced by the threat of nuclear war. True, American children did not witness a catastrophe of World Trade Center dimension. They did, however, see in movie theaters and, later, on television, the unspeakable horrors that followed the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Also, they were frequently reminded of what could lay in store for them by under-the-desk bomb shelter drills in school and by countless films and TV programs.

To investigate the effects of those earlier traumas, I studied the reactions of children and adolescents in the aftermath to the Berlin Wall crisis of 1961, and during the first week of the Cuban crisis in 1962--when the world was teetering on the edge of an abyss. Most of the children and teenagers recognized the threat, were concerned about the safety of family and friends, and other people as well, and saddened that civilization itself was endangered. As to their own fate, they were worried about their survival and embittered about the possibility of being deprived of the satisfactions of a career and the pleasures of adult life. No concern, however, was more acute than separation from their parents and siblings. Yet, for all that, the studies revealed no clear evidence of pathology resulting from their fears.

Subsequent studies, carried out by researchers in the U.S. and other countries, elicited similar findings about mental health consequences: A burden of anxiety and fear but not mental illness. The small percentage of school-age children who exhibited signs of pathology showed them in relation to life in general and not just to nuclear war threats.

As for today, there is reason to believe that the Cold War findings are applicable, that the traumas of September 11, and anxieties about the future, will not tip the scale to mental disorder, at least for the vast majority who did not suffer a personal loss.

Still, we adults should do what was done in periods of crisis during the decades of the Cold War to help alleviate needless worry and correct distortions. We should encourage children and teenagers to share their thoughts and feelings about the event, and to do that verbally, or for the younger ones, through drawings, puppets or other expressive arts. All children need blanket reassurance about their own and their family's safety, except, of course, those with parents in the military. Children under six cannot comprehend the meaning of the event and need assurance rather than discussion, while those in the middle years need help in understanding it. The preadolescents and teenagers can benefit from full-blown discussion about the conflict and what they might do to be helpful.

As always, children's needs differ. The frightened ones may require extra doses of assurance and the sad ones may need us to commiserate with them. The angry children require help in finding constructive ways of channeling their anger. Those children who do not appear to be alarmed may be suppressing their feelings, or simply have not grasped the implications of the events or, more happily, may be resilient and secure. For teenagers, and even for children, involvement by helping others is therapeutic and personally and socially desirable. To be effective, however, in any of these supportive efforts, adults must find ways to deal with their own anxieties about the future.

Milton Schwebel, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus of Psychology

Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology

Rutgers University

Piscataway, NJ 08854-8085

Phone: 732/247-1725

Former Dean, Rutgers Graduate School of Education

Founding Editor: Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, affiliated with the American Psychological Society.

My studies, referred to above, appeared in M. Schwebel (Ed.). Behavioral Science and Human Survival, Palo Alto: Science and Behavior Books, 1965.

My most recent publications are two co-authored chapters in D. Christie et al (Eds.). Peace, Conflict and Violence, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001.

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