According to Blythe, CMI's largest previous response was in August 1992, during Hurricane Andrew in Florida. At that time, CMI offered services to 28 companies simultaneously. According to Cardin, CMI counselors visited 136 companies during the first two weeks after the September 11 attacks, including 14 that had been tenants of the World Trade Center.
One source of referrals in the wake of the attacks was mental-health employee-assistance programs (EAPs) that companies already had in place. The EAPs, in turn, contracted with CMI for counseling. Chuck Taylor is executive vice president of workplace services for ValueOptions Inc., a large behavioral-health managed-care company that tapped CMI. In the first week, ValueOptions used 50 CMI counselors a day for its client companies. In the first three weeks, Taylor says, ValueOptions held five years' worth of "critical-incident debriefings," many of which were staffed by CMI. "I reviewed the feedback from those first weeks, and our clients and their employees reported a 99.6% satisfaction rate," says Taylor. "To get those kinds of ratings, it not only means that people liked what CMI did -- it means that they didn't have one person who was an hour late to one session. That level of customer service -- it's fantastic."
In hundreds of debriefing sessions, CMI's counselors heard stories that were too unsettling or graphic for newspaper or television. They heard individuals describe images, sounds, and smells that can haunt people's sleep for weeks, rattle their waking concentration, reorder the priorities of their lives.
Lynn Friedman, a PhD from New Orleans, was sent to Long Island to debrief the staff of an insurance company that had offices in the World Trade Center. "These were ground-zero survivors," says Friedman, "people who walked down more than 50 flights of stairs to get out. They saw people in wheelchairs with no way out, people staying with those in the wheelchairs. They saw bodies falling to the ground. One person got pushed out of the way of a falling body -- that's why he survived."
The theory of crisis debriefing, which has its roots in World War II and Vietnam battlefield counseling, is that, as Friedman puts it, "just telling the story is important. It's important for people to put all of the puzzle pieces together, to be validated in their feelings, and to get information." In sessions of 15 to 20 people, lasting between one and two hours, participants are guided through three steps: venting stories and feelings; "normalization," in which the counselor reassures participants that the range of their reactions is normal; and education about the typical course of the stress reactions, the healing power of time and routine, and what signs to look for that might indicate the need for more counseling.
CMI's counselors quietly do a couple of other things. They constantly assess debriefing-group members, watching for people who even early on are not coping well and need follow-up help. They also function as a corporate-crisis feedback loop, listening for unhappiness about a company's security or response, gauging things such as anger and blame. CMI counselors not only file a written report -- they also sit down with managers at day's end to provide a sense of mood and morale.
"This is really a blend of therapy and consulting," says Porter, who maintains a small private practice that specializes in combat veterans. "We use the word 'consultant,' not 'therapist.' Being debriefed is therapeutic -- but it is not therapy. For one thing, there is no implied confidentiality in the process" -- although CMI claims to be protective of the names of those who receive counseling -- "and we do give advice. We have a real emphasis on the here and now, on how to move forward."
Some firms who contracted with CMI were deep into planning layoffs before the World Trade Center attacks and wanted to know what to do about that. "We said, Deal with what's in front of your face," says Porter. "Take care of your people first. Then, after a few weeks have gone by, you can turn and look at the downsizing question again."
Bruce Blythe is a psychologist-turned-executive who left private practice to cofound an early EAP. He founded CMI when he realized, after working on the aftermath of a plane crash, that companies had no idea what to do for employees after a crisis.
Blythe's style is a sometimes jarring mix of salesman and therapist. "I've always known that I was into psychology," he says. "But talking to one person at a time? Not for me. I'm a consultant, an entrepreneur -- and my product is mental health."
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