Mothers, Infants and Young Children of September 11, 2001: A Primary Prevention Project

The group of papers presented in this volume represents ten years of involvement of a group of eight core therapists, working originally with approximately forty families who suffered the loss of husbands and fathers on September 11, 2001. The study focuses on the families of women who were pregnant and widowed in the disaster, or of women who were widowed with an infant born in the previous year. This book maps the support and services provided by the pro bono primary prevention project “ the 'September 11, 2001 Mothers, Infants and Young Children Project' “ organised by a highly trained group of therapists specialising in adult, child, mother-infant and family treatment, as well as in nonverbal communication. The demands of the 9/11 crisis led these therapists to expand on their psychoanalytic training, fostering new approaches to meeting the needs of these families in need. They sought out these families, offering support groups for mothers and their infants and young children in the mothers " own neighbourhoods, and bringing the families to mother-child filming sessions at the New York State Psychiatric Institute at Columbia University. In 2011, marking the 10th anniversary of the World Trade Center tragedy, the Project continues to provide pro bono services for these mothers who lost their husbands, for their infants who are now approximately ten years old, and for the siblings of these children. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy.