Sandy's wrath left invisible wounds on traumatized children

• Five weeks after the storm, medical professionals anticipate an increase in children displaying signs of stress; Federal Emergency Management Agency providing funding for youth counseling; Experiences from previous storm shows long-linger post-storm stress disorder issues

Weather was becoming life-or-death for 11-year-old Dylan DeMatteo. Long before bad storms with pleasant-sounding names like Sandy or Irene hit the Jersey Shore, DeMatteo was cowering from windows or walking head-down in the wind.

The symptoms started subtly in the third grade, but by the fourth grade, they escalated to dry heaves, hives and heavy sweating.

"What you and I would consider a beautiful breezy day petrified Dylan. He would see the trees blowing and he would be afraid they were going to crash down," said his mother, Kelley DeMatteo, 43. "He spent a whole summer when he refused to leave the house because he was in fear."

Now, as a result of Sandy, other children may be heading that way.

Five weeks removed from the storm, medical professionals anticipate an increase in children and teens displaying signs of post-traumatic stress disorder or other anxiety disorders due to the storm. The fear, however, is that amid the ongoing quest for normalcy, the signs will be missed by parents and caretakers, just as they were by the DeMatteos.

"Unless you have your antenna up and are attuned to the symptoms, you may miss it," said Dr. Steven Kairys, chairman of pediatrics at the K. Hovnanian Children's Hospital. "They're real and they're important, but they're not (making) kids end up in the ER."

New Jersey health officials have recognized the effects Sandy will have on mental health, and on Thursday announced that the Department of Human Services received nearly $2 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to extend crisis counseling to Sandy survivors through its program, "New Jersey Hope and Healing."

Children are especially vulnerable, and early detection is key to addressing anxiety issues before they become long-term traumas.

"The longer we sit on it, the longer it becomes a real fear that's harder to shake," said Christine Tintorer, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Monmouth Medical Center.

A 2011 study published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology found that 35 percent of children who endured Florida's Hurricane Charley in 2004 experienced moderate to very severe PTSD during the first nine months; 29 percent reported those levels after 21 months.

"It kind of rocks the foundation of what they originally experienced as their home, their safety net," George M. Kapalka, the chairman of Monmouth University's psychological counseling department, said of powerful storms.

Symptoms of anxiety are likely revealing themselves by now. In school, children may be despondent, apprehensive to participate in class or depressed. At home, bedwetting and fear of sleeping alone are red flags, but there are more subtle clues that there are issues: a stomach ache, a headache, a failure to return to normal, experts said.

"Now I am starting to see people who are not snapping out of it," Tintorer said.

At Kapalka's private practice in Brick, he has seen four or five times as many children exhibiting signs of anxiety disorders since the storm, he said. As a pre-emptive measure, Kapalka said, psychology students at Monmouth University have been dispatched to particularly hard-hit areas of Monmouth and Ocean counties with the aim of identifying stress anxiety symptoms and offering resources for treatment. Likewise, the Department of Human Services has dispatched hundreds of specially trained counselors to help storm victims, the department said in a statement.

Acute disorder more common

Post-traumatic stress, which is a long-term disorder, is not as common in children as Acute Stress Disorder, Kapalka said.

"The vast majority of what I think we're going to see is these instances that will not be diagnosed as PTSD but will nevertheless affect how kids are doing," Kapalka said.

But devastating storms, like wars, have an infinite capacity for victims and will pick them off in slow measure, especially if they don't seek treatment.

"There will be a great deal of undiagnosed cases," said Dr. Arshad Siddiqui, medical director of the Stepping Stones intensive outpatient program at Barnabas Behavioral Health Center in Toms River. "We'll be dealing with this for years."

Siddiqui said that everyone who experienced the storm will need help to a certain extent, be it long-term professional care or simply talking with friends or family.

"It's all a matter of how you adjust to the new normal," he said.

For Dylan DeMatteo, there is still a long way to go to overcome his anxieties.

About a month before Sandy struck, DeMatteo took Dylan to see Tintorer. who started the family on the long path to rectifying Dylan's debilitating anxiety, known as a specific phobia.

He made it through last year's Tropical Storm Irene OK, his mother said. He made it through superstorm Sandy even better. His favorite television show, he said, is the Discovery Channel's "Stormchasers."

If there is a goal besides unburdening himself of his fear of the weather — wind, mostly — it is for others to seek help sooner rather than later.

"The last thing I want," he said, "is for more people to suffer the way I suffered."