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October 2002, 800 plus hostages were held for three days in a Moscow theater by suicide terrorists armed with bombs. The stand-off ended when Russian Special Forces gassed and stormed the theater. One hundred thirty of the hostages died. The authors - an American psychologist and colleagues from the Russian Academy of Sciences - began to collaborate soon after the event. This article reports on interviews with eleven hostages regarding their psychological responses to captivity including their expressions of Stockholm syndrome.

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No abstract

In October 2002 armed suicide terrorists held over 800 theatergoers hostage for three days. The standoff ended when Russian Special Forces gassed and stormed the theater. The terrorists were killed and hostages were dragged to buses that took them to hospitals where unprepared doctors struggled to revive them. 130 hostages died: 125 from the gas, only five directly from the terrorists’ actions. An American author collaborated with colleagues from the Russian Academy of Sciences shortly after the event to study acute psychological responses of the hostages. This paper reports on posttraumatic and acute responses following the event in eleven hostages and makes recommendations for short-term interventions following such an ordeal.