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As rescue and recovery crews at the site of the devastated World Trade Center joined Mayor Rudolph Giuliani on October 11 in a solemn ceremony to honor the more than 3,000 people who perished there exactly one month earlier, there was a growing awareness among New Yorkers that while the immediate horror of September 11 may be mercifully receding into the past, the long-term human crisis caused by the attack on New York is just beginning.

It will take a year or more for workers to remove the enormous amount of debris from the site of the wrecked Twin Towers. It will take much longer than that to address the urgent multiple needs confronting untold thousands of New Yorkers as they struggle to rebuild their lives. Many people who sought emergency counseling in the immediate aftermath of September 11 due to the trauma of having experienced the terror of that day at close range or having suffered the devastating loss of a loved one will continue to avail themselves of a variety of mental health services for months to come. Countless New Yorkers have lost their means of livelihood as a direct result of the collapse of the World Trade Center and the devastation of the surrounding area or due to the 'ripple effect' caused by the calamity to the entire New York City economy. For these and so many other people, the rescue and recovery effort is still in its early stages.

From the very onset of the tragedy, F.E.G.S.(Federation Employment and Guidance Services), with its headquarters building less than a mile north of the World Trade Center site, has been involved in the recovery effort. F.E.G.S.' decades of experience in mental health counseling and employment has enabled the agency to provide many people with the psychological counseling they need to regain their emotional equilibrium as well as with employment services that will make it possible for them to get back to work. In addition to the F.E.G.S. network of offices throughout metropolitan New York, a walk-in crisis center was set up at F.E.G.S. headquarters to provide counseling and employment services.

F.E.G.S.' mental health staff has worked to deliver invaluable outreach, crisis intervention, and support services to individuals, organizations and businesses. F.E.G.S. participated in relief efforts at the official New York City crisis sites where families gathered to seek missing loved ones; initially at the 26th Street Armory and later at Pier 94 on the Hudson River. We worked closely with the New York City Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Alcoholism Services, the New York State Department of Mental Health and the Red Cross to provide crisis intervention and specialized counseling services, including trauma debriefing. F.E.G.S. staff members serve onboard boats that leave Pier 94 three times a day and sail by the site of the World Trade Center so that family members can grieve and try to achieve closure.

F.E.G.S. is serving individuals and families affected by the crisis in each of its New York State licensed Behavioral Health Counseling Centers throughout New York City and Long Island; waiving appointments and seeing people as they call or come in regardless of their ability to pay or insurance coverage. The agency has provided expertise to large managed care companies like UBH, Cigna, MHN and Magna Care which have been besieged by calls from hundreds of companies that are their clients. F.E.G.S.' crisis counselors have visited governmental and not-for-profit agencies to meet with staff members who are frightened and distracted as a result of the tragedy. F.E.G.S. has given training to volunteer youth advisors to help them respond to the needs of distressed youngsters in community centers and schools throughout the city, including many deprived communities.

F.E.G.S. counselors throughout Greater New York report a sharp upswing of former Soviet refugees experiencing grief, anxiety and a feeling of helplessness in the face of an event as frightening and traumatic as anything they endured in their former homeland. Many are shocked and depressed by the sudden loss of the feeling of security they believed they had attained permanently for themselves and their children by leaving the chaos, privation and anti-Semitism of the former Soviet Union behind and moving to a land characterized by stability and equality of opportunity.

F.E.G.S. counselors who have engaged in what is known as critical incident stress debriefing with those who witnessed the collapse of the Twin Towers or lost loved ones report that these people manifest physical symptoms such as chronic headaches, nausea, difficulty in breathing, chest pains and elevated blood pressure, as well as insomnia, nightmares, memory loss and panic attacks. Many fear entering tall buildings or riding the subway. Some have expressed overwhelming guilt at having survived while cherished friends and colleagues have perished. In addition to the overwhelming need for mental health services, New York faces a major employment crisis as well.

Thousands of people who had worked in firms located in and around the World Trade Center and untold numbers of others employed in small or mid-sized businesses in lower Manhattan found themselves suddenly out of work. Virtually all the industries that thrive in New York, including finance, travel and tourism, retailing, art, and the vast service economy that relies on these businesses, are laying off workers, relocating, or going out of business.

F.E.G.S. employment services have expanded to accommodate the employment needs of all New Yorkers affected by the tragedy. F.E.G.S. is working closely with the Mayor's office on such initiatives as the Twin Towers Job Link, as well as with the corporate and business community and the UJA-Federation network to coordinate the needs of employers with the pool of workers needing employment. F.E.G.S.' employment initiative also includes emergency hotlines for job seekers and for employers wishing to list jobs and hire the newly unemployed. F.E.G.S. has expanded outplacement services for businesses and for several community-based organizations. Integral to the agency's effort to spur employment in the wake of the September 11 disaster is the availability of counseling support/stress debriefing services to all individuals who come to F.E.G.S. for help in finding jobs.

As dire as has been the immediate effect of the tragedy of September 11, the long-term impact of this tragedy on hundreds of thousands of individuals and on the economy and collective psyche of New York and the nation as a whole is only beginning to come into focus. In these uncertain times, one thing of which New Yorkers can be sure in the weeks and months ahead is that

F.E.G.S., with its unparalleled ability to provide a seamless web of mental health and employment services to people in need, will continue to be at the heart of the response of the city and the entire region to this massive humanitarian and economic crisis.