GRIP OF PAIN

2 years later, Newtown still suffering

TIME IS NOT healing the hidden wounds in Newtown.

Alcoholism, insomnia, depression, guilt — the sad assortment of problems is a crippling constant in the Connecticut town as it prepares for the second anniversary of the Dec. 14, 2012, mass shooting at its elementary school.

But Connecticut officials are actively combating the issues that developed in the community of 27,000 after the killing spree inside the Sandy Hook Elementary School. “We’ve found the issues are more complex in the second year,” said Newtown School Superintendent Joseph Eradi. “A lot of people were running on adrenaline that first year.”

There will be no official commemoration Sunday of the 20 first-graders and six staff mem- bers who were slaughtered by a young man from town who also killed his mom that day.

Instead, Connecticut agencies — using federal grant money — are trying to arrange a long-term support system, covering g the next 15 years, as s the traumatized students grow into adults.

“Here it is two years later, and it’s still hard to deal with,” said Beth Hegarty, who was inside the elementary school with her three daughters when the gunman started firing.

“But God, you didn’t want to know me two years ago.”

For Hegarty, there were signals from her girls of lingering psychological problems. They would climb into her bed in the middle of the night, and wanted to stay in the house instead of venturing outside.

A teacher for one of the girls noticed that she would sit in class and stare at the doorway instead o of paying attention.

Hegarty, who hid beneath a school conference table during the shooting, said her own situation has improved during t the past 24 months.

“I was super-react tive to everything,” s she said about the fi first few months afterw ward. “I would fly off the handle on a whim. I was emotional. I couldn’t handle crowds or loud noises.”

Hegarty, like thousands of her neighbors, took advantage of the counseling and other services offered as she tried to get her life back. It was hard: The mother was meeting with Principal Dawn Hochsprung and school psychologist Mary Sherlach when the bullets started flying. Hegarty was the only one of the trio to survive.

But she’s among the regulars at the Newtown Resiliency Center, launched after the mass murder. Newtown Youth and Family Services has added 29 workers in the last two years, quadrupling its staff.

The Newtown-Sandy Hook Community Foundation says it was providing private counseling services to people without health insurance or with no coverage for treatment from their insurers.

A mental health center will open next month in the town’s middle school.