Scientific American, in one of their "60 second science" features, reports on a study recently published which appears to replicate the findings of a study from at least a decade ago in the UK -- namely that grief counseling after traumatic events may be more harm than help. Again this finding seems obvious if we consider that grief and other uncomfortable emotions are normal following such events. It is only when, by community consensus, such emotions and reactions persist and interfere with normal life that treatment may be called for.
As an example, when I first met my ex-husband's mother 40 years ago, I asked her if she had any siblings. She teared up and said she had had a brother but he died. Judging from her reaction, I thought this must have been recent. But I discovered that actually her brother had died more than 50 years previous when he was a toddler and she was a young child. We could certainly say that such a reaction is unusual, but she managed quite handily to deal with the ups and downs of normal life -- a marriage, two children, family, outside interests. And she could certainly have benefitted from therapy to deal with the issues in her family that left her with a terrible burden of guilt. But, by all reasonable criteria, she was a healthy functioning adult and not in need of treatment.
Taking something like this on a larger scale, like the aftermath of 9/11, we can see that it is expectable that those who lost loved ones that day or had their own narrow escapes or lived or worked in Manhattan, might well have lingering effects of that experience. But the vast majority of those people have gone on with their lives, even though they may still have difficulty thinking about or talking about those events. It is that small portion of people whose grief and reactions have paralyzed them, frozen them in that time, who would most benefit from treatment. But we cannot know who those people will be until time has passed, until time has had opportunity to heal wounds, as it most often does.
The intentions behind grief and crisis counseling are good but research has again suggested they are not helpful.