For one week in late April and early May , a hacker ( or hackers ) got into servers that held information provided by 22,000 people for 11 mental health studies being done at the New York State Psychiatric Institute . These were not patients being treated at the institute , but subjects of its research . They included , among others , schoolchildren directly exposed to the events of Sept. 11 ; Puerto Rican youth ; severely emotional disturbed young people in Westchester County and their caretakers ; people in the Bronx suffering from post - traumatic stress who have family in the criminal justice system ; students at three schools in Queens and four others in Washington Heights , Manhattan , whose mental health needs were being assessed . It was a hack with different fingers , infiltrating two servers operated by the State of New York and plucking out information of varying calibers . For about 9,000 people , it captured the kind of data that is sold to identity thieves , like names , addresses and so forth . But also stored in the servers was what people had to say about trauma , and how they were tossed about by the many storms of human existence or weathered them . This is useful and powerful information for researchers . Also , possibly , to criminals . ;