The mystery cure

"EMDR is phenomenal," says Bergmann. "It has sped up everything. After 11 years of practicing it, I'm still amazed."

Bergmann isn't the only therapist in New York who is currently performing EMDR. According to the EMDR Humanitarian Assistance Program, which offers EMDR therapy and training to people in disaster zones, 500 EMDR clinicians have volunteered to treat the survivors of the September attacks for free; and more are calling every day. They've even set up a hotline (917-626-9117 for those in New York City; 800-531-3640 elsewhere).

The EMDR Humanitarian Assistance Program has plenty of experience with disasters -- they've visited disaster sites all over the world, beginning with the tragedy in Oklahoma City. "We got a call about a week after the bombing from an FBI agent who had had EMDR therapy," says Shapiro. "People had already started going into the mental health professionals. He said, 'Can you do something? The mental health professionals are dropping like flies.' ... We trained 200 clinicians there."

Although EMDR clinicians such as Bergmann have already begun coping with the immediate aftermath of the events in New York, the greatest need for EMDR is usually in the year following a tragedy. It often takes survivors several months to realize that they need help. This was the case in Sarajevo, where EMDR-trained clinicians worked with children who were severely traumatized by years of proximity to war and death.

"There is an immediate application of EMDR that can be done strategically, but the primary emphasis is in the following weeks and months," says Barbara Korzun, the executive director of the EMDR Humanitarian Assistance Program. "We see the most need for it in post-conflict cultures, like Sarajevo and Bangladesh, and cultures where conflict is ongoing like Northern Ireland. And the inner cities of the U.S."

Korzun's most recent project in the United States was in Littleton, Colo., where she worked to train local therapists in EMDR techniques to help both children and adults who were still upset months after the attack at Columbine High School. Says Kurzon, "In Columbine, they were seeing severe post-traumatic stress throughout the whole community -- they found EMDR incredibly helpful."

According to Kurzon, child survivors are often the best candidates for EMDR. "Children show more symptoms of stress than adults," she says. "But EMDR works very fast with children because they don't have layering of memories that adults have. Even severe trauma can be resolved quite rapidly. We're just readying to do a training for those working with children in New York City."

The aftershocks of the World Trade Center will resonate in the minds and hearts of its survivors for months or even years; and this, say EMDR researchers, is why EMDR will play a key role in their recovery -- now and later.

"In the aftermath of a tragedy such as this, with unresolved grief and pain, reactions can be uncontrollable anger; or numbing, withdrawal and depression," says Shapiro. "You can imagine parents who have lost a loved one manifesting these symptoms, and see what devastating effects it would have on their children. You set up problems which will be ongoing for many years. The bottom line is pain begets pain, suffering begets suffering."

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