Action beats talking for upset children

4/23/2003

TAMPA, Fla., April 23 (UPI) -- Studies about how children reacted to the stress of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks found that they were better off doing something than talking about it.

Wearing a patriotic T-shirt, selling lemonade to raise funds and donating food were all more helpful than talk, according to studies discussed Wednesday at the biennial conference of the Society for Research in Child Development.

"Adults and children react differently," said Martha Wadsworth, professor of psychology at the University of Denver.

"Parents coped by talking to each other. Children and adolescents are more likely to benefit from something concrete, such as making donations or participating in some other way," Wadsworth told reporters in advance of the opening of the conference Thursday.

"Adolescents were afraid of talking to their parents for fear of upsetting them. They said they were not helpful," she said.

She said the more information children got from TV, radio and newspapers the more stressed they became, studies by the Sesame Workshop showed. But she said it was not clear whether the media produced the stress or they used the media more because they were already upset.

J. Lawrence Aber, director of the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University, said parents should monitor their children's use of the media during times of trouble.

"If their children are distressed, parents should get a sense of how much coverage they are watching. If they're using a lot, they should urge them to use less and find alternatives," Aber said.

Wadsworth said the type of media didn't seem to make a difference. She said TV, radio and newspapers all seemed to have the same degree of negative impact.

She said the studies did not show why that was so, although she said some radio reports were even more graphic than TV, including one that relayed a last telephone call from a loved one.

Aber said nearly all of the reports to be presented this week note that the stress level was greater among females -- both women and girls -- than males, except for conduct disorders. He said studies by Columbia and Georgetown University showed Hispanics also were susceptible.

He said disaster preparedness plans by local, state and federal governments understandably concentrate on dealing with physical problems, but he said too little attention is paid to mental health.

He said in normal times in New York, 250,000 of the 1.1 million school children have diagnosable mental health disorders but only a quarter of those get any care.

The conference runs through Sunday and is expected to draw about 5,000 researchers and scholars.

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