Posttraumatic stress reactions related to the Madrid March 11, 2004, terrorist attacks were examined in a sample of Madrid residents (N = 503) 18-25 days after the attacks, using multiple diagnostic criteria and different cut-off scores. Based on the symptoms covered by the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist-Civilian (PCL-C; Weathers, Litz, Herman, Huska, & Keane, 1993), rates of probable posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) ranged from 3.4% to 13.3%. Taking into account additional criteria from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 200; i.e., the impact of initial reaction and problems in daily functioning as a consequence of the traumatic event), only 1.9% of respondents reported probable PTSD. These results suggest that inferences about the impact of traumatic events on the general population are strongly influenced by the definition of traumatic response. Our findings also revealed that the magnitude of posttraumatic reactions is associated with several risk factors, including living close to the attacked locations, physical proximity to the attacks when they occurred, perception of one's life being at risk, intensity of initial emotional reactions, and being a daily user of the attacked train lines. The use of different cut-off scores did not affect the pattern of risk to develop traumatic stress. The implications of these results for public health policies related to terrorist attacks are discussed.

One month after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York, the Corriere della Sera published an article on the possible future consequences for literature of this horrific event. Some novelists boldly declared their work would not be affected at all, while others observed that their literary visions and perspectives were already responses to life's tragic aspects. Several writers confessed to wondering, at least initially, whether literature henceforth could continue to have any real sense. A decade later, this essay examines the nature of the Italian response. It looks first at the views of those writers who expressed opinions directly to the press or in essay form, and then at a small number of novels (by Tullio Avoledo, Marisa Bulgheroni and Tiziana Rinaldi Castro) and short stories (by Andrea Piva, Andrej Longo and Andrea Canobbio) which have embraced the theme, and which have done so in ways that reinforce the sense of an underlying political and/or cultural aesthetic. Connections between twenty-first-century reactions to 9/11 and the Italian experience or memory of political terrorism and war will be explored, as well as the question of inspiration for novelists, in the particular context of catastrophe or trauma.