Editing Cocoanut Grove fire (section)

====Psychological trauma====
[[Erich Lindemann]], an MGH psychiatrist, studied the survivors of the dead and published what has become a classic paper, "Symptomatology and Management of Acute Grief",<ref>{{Cite journal| last = Lindemann| first = Erich| author-link = Erich Lindemann| title = Symptomatology and Management of Acute Grief| journal = [[American Journal of Psychiatry]]| volume = 151| issue = 2| pages = 155–160| publisher = [[American Psychiatric Association]]| pmid = 8192191 |date=June 1994| doi = 10.1176/ajp.101.2.141}}</ref><ref name = "Smith"/> read at the Centenary Meeting of the [[American Psychiatric Association]] in 1944.

At the same time Lindemann was laying the foundation for the study of [[grief]] and dysfunctional grieving, [[Alexandra Adler]] conducted psychiatric observations and questionnaires over eleven months with more than 500 survivors of the fire, publishing some of the earliest research on [[post-traumatic stress disorder]]. More than half of the survivors exhibited symptoms of general nervousness and anxiety which lasted at least three months. Survivors who lost consciousness for a short period of time during the incident exhibited the most post-traumatic mental complications.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Vande Kemp |first=Hendrika |date=Spring 2003 |title=Alexandra Adler, 1901-2001 |url=http://www.psych.yorku.ca/femhop/Adler.htm |url-status=dead |format=reprint |journal=The Feminist Psychologist |language=en |publisher=Society for the Psychology of Women |volume=30 |issue=2 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20031222202129/http://www.psych.yorku.ca/femhop/Adler.htm |archive-date=2003-12-22 |access-date=2010-12-02}}</ref> Adler noted that 54% of survivors treated at BCH and 44% of those at MGH exhibited "post-traumatic neuroses", and that a majority of the survivors' friends and family members showed signs of "emotional upset that attained proportions of a major psychiatric condition and needed trained intervention."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=ADLER |first=ALEXANDRA |title=Neuropsychiatric Complications in Victims of Boston's Cocoanut Grove Disaster |date=1943-12-25 |url=https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.1943.02840520014004 |journal=Journal of the American Medical Association |volume=123 |issue=17 |pages=1098–1101 |doi=10.1001/jama.1943.02840520014004 |issn=0002-9955|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Adler also discovered one survivor with a lasting brain lesion who presented symptoms of [[visual agnosia]], most likely caused by exposure to carbon monoxide fumes, other noxious gases and/or a lack of sufficient oxygen.<ref>Adler, A., "Course and outcome of visual agnosia." ''Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease,'' 1950:111, 41-51.</ref>