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Learning From The Past and Planning For The Future
MENTAL HEALTH MOMENT May 21, 2004 "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.
There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." - John Quincy Adams
Short Subjects
LINKS Rocky Mountain Region
Disaster Mental Health Institute
CONFERENCES AND WORKSHOPS:
3rd Annual Hawaii
International Conference on Social Sciences
June 16 - 19, 2004
Location: Honolulu Hawaii, USA
Contact: social@hicsocial.orgSociety for the Psychological Study of
Social Issues (SPSSI) Convention
June 25 - 27, 2004
Location: Washington, DC, USA
17th Congress of the International Association
of Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP)
August 2 - 6, 2004
Location: Xi'an, CHINA
Contact: Zheng Gang
Institute of Psychology
Chinese Academy of Sciences
100101 Beijing, China
Email: iaccp2004@psych.ac.cnSixth International Conference of
the Learning Sciences (ICLS 2004):
"Embracing Diversity in the Learning Sciences"
June 22 - 26, 2004
Location: Santa Monica, California, USA
International Society of Political Psychology
27th Annual Scientific Meeting
July, 15-18, 2004
Location: Lund, Sweden
62nd Annual Conference of the
International Council of Psychologists
August 3 - 6, 2004
Location: University of Jinan
Jinan, CHINA
Contact: Dr. Natividad Dayan
Scientific Chair
99 General Ave
GSIS Village, Project 8
Quezon City, Metro Manila
01108 PHILIPPINES Telephone: 632-724-5358
Email: bereps@pacific.net.phXXVIII International Congress of Psychology
August 8 - 13, 2004
Location: Beijing, CHINA
Contact: XiaoLan FU, Deputy Director
Committee for International Cooperation
Chinese Psychological Society
Institute of Psychology
Chinese Academy of Sciences
P.O. Box 1603
Beijing 100101, China
Telephome: +86-10-6202-2071
Fax: +86-10-6202-2070
22nd Nordic Congress of Psychology:
"Psychology in a World of Change and Diversity -
Challenges for our Profession"
August 18 -20, 2004
Location: Copenhagen, DENMARK
Contact: Roal Ulrichsen, Chair
NPK2004 Organizing Committee
Danish Psychological Association
Stokholmsgade 27, DK-2100
Copenhagen Ø, Denmark
Email: bh@vanhauen.dk
Wildfires May Be Likely - Damage Doesn't Have To Be
Years of drought in the West have created a conducive environment for wildfires, and this summer is expected to be no exception. However, there are steps that individuals and communities can take to prevent or limit damage by these fires. A new FEMA publication explains how to do just that. For Full Information, Go To: http://www.fema.gov/regions/viii/athome_woods.shtm
FEMA's New On-Line Course Helps Urban Firefighters Battle Wildfires More Safely
The Department of Homeland Security's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is unveiling an on-line, independent study course that will enable urban firefighters with expertise in responding to structure fires to safely participate in a wildland/urban interface event. "The 2004 wildfire season is predicted to be long and hard, and will pose a challenge to all of this nation's firefighters," said Michael D. Brown, Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Emergency Preparedness and Response. "This course is important as it provides another tool for the fire service so that urban firefighters can safely assist in battling wildfires." Specialists at the U.S. Fire Administration's National Fire Academy developed the online course, Wildland/Urban Interface Fire Operations for the Structural Firefighter Self Study (Q618). The online course identifies many of the operational activities and safety concerns for the structural firefighter in the so-called interface areas, where housing is located in or near wildlands. The course also includes wildland fire behavior, safety issues and operational issues. The training program is a joint effort of the National Wildfire Coordinating Group and USFA's National Fire Programs Division. The course takes between two to eight hours to complete; those successfully finishing it receive a certification of completion. The course is located at: http://www.usfa.fema.gov/applications/nfacsd/display.jsp?cc=Q618
What is an earthquake?
An earthquake is a sudden, rapid shaking of the Earth caused by the breaking and shifting of rock beneath the Earth's surface. For hundreds of millions of years, the forces of plate tectonics have shaped the Earth as the huge plates that form the Earth's surface move slowly over, under, and past each other. Sometimes the movement is gradual. At other times, the plates are locked together, unable to release the accumulating energy. When the accumulated energy grows strong enough, the plates break free causing the ground to shake. Most earthquakes occur at the boundaries where the plates meet; however, some earthquakes occur in the middle of plates.
Ground shaking from earthquakes can collapse buildings and bridges; disrupt gas, electric, and phone service; and sometimes trigger landslides, avalanches, flash floods, fires, and huge, destructive ocean waves (tsunamis). Buildings with foundations resting on unconsolidated landfill and other unstable soil, and trailers and homes not tied to their foundations are at risk because they can be shaken off their mountings during an earthquake. When an earthquake occurs in a populated area, it may cause deaths and injuries and extensive property damage. For More Information, Go To: http://www.fema.gov/hazards/earthquakes/quake.shtm and http://www.fema.gov/hazards/earthquakes/
Migration could escalate as globalization fails to put jobs where needed, UN says
The number of people crossing borders in search of work and financial security will increase rapidly in the next decades as globalization fails to provide them with jobs and economic opportunities, the United Nations International Labour Organization (ILO) says in a new report. For Full Story, Go To: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=10834&Cr=migration&Cr1=
Stranded Liberians arrive in Côte d'Ivoire on towed ship, UN says
More than 300 Liberian refugees trying to repatriate themselves arrived in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, today on a drifting ship with a failed engine that was towed in by a French navy vessel, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said. A UNHCR representative who boarded the stricken Donna Elvira said there were 340 passengers on board, 330 of them Liberian refugees, not the 430 people previously reported. There were no toilets on board and people were lying on top of one another on the ground, while five people needed medical evacuation, he said. For Full Story, Go To: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=10831&Cr=liberia&Cr1=
Consequences of biodiversity loss 'too awful to contemplate' - Annan
With biological diversity now recognized as crucial to sustainable development and the eradication of poverty, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan says "the consequences of failing to stop the loss of biodiversity are too awful to contemplate." In a message for International Day for Biological Diversity, Mr. Annan calls for national policies and new additional financial and technical resources to support international treaties such as the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, which seeks to protect natural biological diversity from organisms modified by modern biotechnology. "Our highest priority should be to guarantee the health and effective functioning of the earth's life support systems - on land, in the seas and in the air," he says, stressing that biological diversity provides the basic goods and ecological services on which all life depends. For More, Go To: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=10822&Cr=biodiversity&Cr1=
UN agency looks to team with Brazil on global campaign to fight hunger
The head of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is in Brazil for talks with top officials on strengthening the agency's partnership with the Government to help energize a global initiative to fight hunger. Executive Director James Morris met in Brasilia today with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, members of Congress and other top ministers to discuss the World Alliance against Hunger and Poverty, which President Lula had proposed last year at the G-8 Summit in France as a way to create new financing mechanisms to accelerate progress on eradicating poverty and hunger. One of the objectives of the Alliance is to create a fund against hunger - dubbed the "Lula Fund" - which would be replenished with levies imposed on arms deals, international financial operations or other financial mechanisms. Donor countries and the private sector would also participate with voluntary contributions. For Full Story, Go To: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=10798&Cr=hunger&Cr1=
UNICEF lauds progress in health and education in Timor-Leste
As Timor-Leste, the world’s newest nation and youngest democracy, marks its second anniversary, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) praised the dramatic improvements in health and education services for children in the southeast Asian country but warned that considerable challenges still remain. “In Timor-Leste, children make up 60 per cent of the population. Only by meeting their basic needs can the country hope to sustain a broader process of development,” UNICEF Regional Director for East Asia and the Pacific Mehr Khan said in a statement. Levels of political will and popular optimism are extraordinarily high, and Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri has stated firmly that good education and health are the foundations of good governance and enduring peace for the country of some 800,000 people, which became independent from Indonesia on 20 May 2002. For Full Story, Go To: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=10819&Cr=timor&Cr1=
UN agency moves to protect native populations fleeing Colombia for Venezuela
The United Nations refugee agency said it was joining other humanitarian organizations rushing to locate and protect hundreds of indigenous Wayúu people driven across the border into Venezuela from their native lands in Colombia by deadly paramilitary strikes. Over the past week, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has been carrying out an assessment mission in the Venezuelan border state of Zulia, where perhaps as many as 500 Wayúu - mostly women and children - have fled from fighting and massacres by illegal armed groups in Colombia. Those attacks have reportedly left 30 people dead and another 60 are reported missing. For Full Story, Go To: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=10824&Cr=colombia&Cr1=
Depression and Acute Myocardial Infarction
A number of studies have demonstrated a relationship between depression and low perceived social support and increased cardiac morbidity and mortality in patients with coronary heart disease. There is also evidence that depression increases the risk of acute myocardial infarction and morbidity and mortality following it. This review examines those studies that have investigated these relationships as well as those that have attempted to explain them on the basis of various pathophysiologic mechanisms. Among the latter are studies that have shown that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are beneficial in the treatment of depression and that they appear to reverse the enhanced platelet activity observed in depressed patients with acute myocardial infarction. Depression increases hospital length of stay, procedures, readmission rates, and the cost of medical care. Much remains to be elucidated concerning the roles of depression and low perceived social support in predisposing to acute myocardial infarction and to increased morbidity and mortality following it. However, sufficient scientific evidence exists for physicians to make efforts to diagnose and treat depression to reduce the concurrent risk of acute myocardial infarction and morbidity and mortality following it. For the Article, Go To: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/475151?src=mp
DISASTER RECOVERY COUNSELING
The model discussed below is based on crisis counseling programs used in disasters over several decades (Lebedun and Wilson, 1989). This model assumes two major dimensions for each target population of survivors:
• the psychological stage of disaster, and• the intrusiveness of programs provided.
The Psychological Stages of Disaster include:
1. The Pre-disaster Stage - innoculation which usually includes prevention and educational programs which supply skills for preparing key community resources (i.e. police, teachers, etc.) for disasters.2. The Heroic Stage is where crisis intervention programming is delivered to survivors together with emergency management efforts.
3. The Honeymoon Stage - crisis intervention services are usually aimed at survivors who are recovering from the initial impact of the disaster. Services are generally delivered in shelters, service centers, disaster assistance centers and feeding sites.
4. The Disillusionment and Reconstruction Stages - survivors begin working on recovery issues to help put their lives back together. Programs in these stages focus on providing disaster recovery counseling, casework approaches, consultation with gatekeepers, partnerships with other disaster and community resources, networking groups, and community organizations.
The intrusiveness dimension of programs suggests that effective programs are ones closest to survivors spatially, temporally, and psycho-socially with no restrictions on funding. These characteristics also suggest how programs should be delivered, depending on the disaster phase. A menu of services used might include: recovery/information, skill-building, mobilization of community resources, natural group crisis counseling, individual and family outreach crisis counseling, recovery counseling, and community organization.
Below is a list of disaster intervention programs with cost/person from low to high cost:
Low Cost
Recovery Education and Counseling Mobilizing Community Resources Community Organization Training and Consultation Skillbuilding Gatekeepers Natural Group CounselingHigh Cost
Recovery Counseling
Disaster Intervention Program Strategies
The most pressing needs of survivors must be dealt with first. Maslow's (1943) Heirarchy of Needs is the best approach in analyzing how to address this area. Below are listed, in increasing order, Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs:
1. Basic Psychological NeedsMost basic are survival and security needs. These are paramount in the early phases of a disaster. When these needs are addressed, the survivor can move from immediate needs to longer term recovery and higher order needs.2. Safety and Security
3. Affection and Social Activity
4. Esteem, status
5. Self-realization
As a result, the model we are discussing is designed to be flexible yet comprehensive. Not every individual, or target group, is going to need every service at each phase. Survivors' needs must continually be assessed in order to modify approaches and use the tools which are most salient at each phase of the recovery process. It is also very important to anticipate the next level of needs for the target individual, family or population so that timely changes can be made in program strategies.
For example, a target population might be farmers. There is sparse literature describing the needs of farmers following disasters. Mermelstein and Sundet (1986) described a survey of mental health centers concerning the need for mental health services among farmers as a result of the Midwest farm crisis. The results showed that 64% of survey respondents indicated a "precipitous" increase in caseloads attributable to the crisis. The four most prevalent conditions were depression, withdrawal-denial, crisis behaviors, and alcohol and other drug abuse. Heffernan and Heffernan (1986) carried out a landmark study of stress following the farm crisis. This study demonstrated that "about one fourth of the men and women indicated they had increased smoking. Eighteen percent of the men and twelve percent of the women said they experienced an increase in their drinking." Anecdotal information collected by the National Association of Mental Health (1987) during the farm crisis suggests that increased substance abuse was a result of the crisis. While not directly related to disasters, these studies are informative about how farmers react to stressors.
For a comprehensive disaster outreach model to be applicable from disaster to disaster, regardless of the type or even severity of the disaster, several key threads must be woven throughout the stages and addressed appropriately. These include the heirarchy of needs that require resolution. Using Maslow's model, needs range from basic food, water, shelter, and safety to recognition and self actualization. This holds true whether the population is farmers, school age children, elderly citizens, etc.
Model For Disaster Recovery
There are 5 basic principles for developing a successful disaster recovery program:
1. The program must be woven into the surviving infrastructure of the community. It must optimally use the strengths that are already present, including family ties, neighborhood networks, schools, church affiliation, etc. It must also minimally disrupt the surviving infrastructure.2. The program must be close to the survivors, in distance, in time, and in culture (and have no economic barrier). The program must minimize distance. The best way to do this is for the survivors to achieve ownership of the program.
3. The program must match the phase of recovery of the survivors. Programs geared to the "Honeymoon" phase will be minimally effective in the "Disillusionment" phase. The successful disaster recovery program is constantly being reinvented.
4. The program must use a range of tools to reach survivors on many levels simultaneously
5. The program must be tailored to the needs of individual survivors and target groups. What works in the city may be useless with rural families, and vice versa. Even more than special efforts, tailored strategies must be designed to address the needs of specific age groups - older adults, preschoolers, adolescents, etc.
Designing A Disaster Recovery Counseling Program
1. Building on the Surviving InfrastructureThe primary rule of any intervention is "first, do no harm". For example, a number of years ago following a widespread flood in the Northeast, the Federal government devised a program to address the temporary housing needs of survivors by arranging mobile homes for them. The government was criticized, however, when decisions on who received the next trailer seemed to be based on local political connections rather than greatest need. Therefore, the program was removed from local influence. However, the end result was the breaking up of local neighborhoods when trailer assignments were made.
Each family registered with the Federal government and an extensive review of their current circumstances and needs was conducted. Then they waited, not receiving any feedback on the status of their applications. At some point, the family would be advised that they were next in line and be told that they would be assigned the next available trailer. However, the next available trailer might be ten miles up river on the opposite bank in a culturally different community. People were not given a choice as to where they could live, or if they could relocate close to others with whom they had established relationships. Neighbors were often assigned to the other side of the river many miles downstream. Children then went to different schools, where none or few of their friends attended.
An unintended side-effect of this program which addressed one need, temporary housing, was to sacrifice many of the strengths that individuals, families and communities had which could have added to and hastened their recovery. Instead, survivors reported additional secondary problems: school maladjustment and decreased performance; increased incidents of family violence, including child abuse; increased use and abuse of alcohol and other drugs. Of course, to meet the temporary housing needs of survivors, a primary need, some disruption was inevitable. The question should be asked: "Could disruption have been minimized if survivors were given more choice in where they lived in order to preserve their previous neighborhood networks, or to choose locations and neighborhoods with the least cultural distance."
The Federal government revised many of its policies in regard to housing since the above example occurred over 25 years ago. However, one of the major difficulties survivors still report is in dealing with the consequences of temporary housing. Our role, then, when dealing with basic survivor needs - in this case temporary housing - is to preserve as much of the social infrastructure as possible. We need to help people develop good alternatives when the fabric of their community is torn.
But what is our role when no infrastructure exists? For instance, in third world nations? When a hurricane hit a Carribean island, disaster relief personnel were dispersed to the hills where a mud slide was said to have devastated a conclave of several thousand people. When they arrived, the "town" was composed of more than ten times as many people as anticipated. These disenfranchised people were officially non-existent. No official map marked the streets, potable water was unavailable, and people were drinking water from ditches. Food had not been distributed in days. A needs assessment that should have taken days took weeks to complete. It was impossible to tell who owned pieces of boards or corrugated tin roofs which had blown away. So there were many disputes over ownership. Obviously, the needs of these survivors were more basic than in most disasters in the continental United States. And yet, there were still informal community leaders who could be identified and some community assets, no matter how meager, to form the basis of recovery.
2. Getting Close To The Survivors
An axiom of psychological intervention is that as distance increases, the effectiveness of the intervention decreases Distance is not just spatial, it can also be measured in time, economic barriers, and cultural or psycho-social distance. Disaster recovery is most effective when distance is minimized by working closely with survivors in terms of time, economics, cultural, spatial, and psycho-social distance. In other words, there is an optimal place, time and approach to survivors in order to maximize their receptivity to intervention.
For example, in the early days of the development of disaster counseling programs, an effort was made by a community mental health center to respond to a commuter train wreck with a large number of fatalities. Few solid models of disaster counseling programs were available, so the community mental health center did what it could. It obtained a list of the families of victims and of survivors of the crash and sent them letters making available counseling groups. When few people responded, staff concluded, probably erroneously, that survivors of disasters and families of victims do not need special interventions.
In the two-plus decades since that incident, there have been many disasters and many fine examples of disaster recovery programs which have had a much more positive result than that pioneer community mental health center. With the train wreck, initially the mental health center created great distance from the survivors in a number of ways:
1. Spatially - the intervention was placed at the mental health center, which was near the site of the wreck, but it meant that survivors, who largely lived in remote suburbs, had to again travel by train to access the center for an intervention.2. Temporally - the mental health center did not survey survivors to pick optimal times for interventions which would fit into the survivors' lives. The mental health center did not respond immediately to the disaster, although they could still have an impact in later phases of disaster (this would make it more difficult to gain credibility).
3. Psycho-socially/culturally - the mental health center was providing a clearly labeled mental health response to a man-made disaster. Most people in disaster situations do not see themselves as having a mental health problem. They feel they just need help to sort things out.
If the mental health center had intervened at a more neutral site, and in conjunction with a "gatekeeper" or "partner" who was closer socially and psychologically to the survivors, there was a better chance that it would have been effective. Such a gatekeeper or partner could have been a neighborhood school (i.e. from the survivors' neighborhoods) or church. The mental health center did not have much economic distance as they were not charging for services. However, people would have had to pay train fare to gain access to the mental health center for services.
Another way of conceptualizing distance is as an "onion skin" with the survivor at the center. In concentric layers moving out from the middle are family, neighbors, friends, coworkers, and extended family, familiar gatekeepers (i.e. clergy, teachers, employers, etc.), local agencies which might have low stigma or a mandate to serve in this situation (the Red Cross, Salvation Army, law enforcement, hospitals, emergency management), and, finally, higher distance or stigmatized organizations, like mental health centers.
The above examples may not be at the same distances for everyone. The "onion" model is idiosyncratic, individualized from survivor to survivor. The best method is to form partnerships with gatekeepers close to survivors. For example, providing programs through the Red Cross or Salvation Army or similar groups in early stages of the disaster and transitioning to programs in partnership with the schools (for children), county extension services (for rural families), or Meals on Wheels program (for older adults), reduce distance.
3. Matching The Phase Of Recovery
It is hard to conceive of a more demanding endeavor than providing disaster recovery services. Ordinarily for a community, unmet needs are assessed which may trend up or down, but which are relatively stable over time. Programs are then designed and adjusted over time, based on outcome results.
Disaster recovery presents us with a moving target. Survivors' needs change dramatically from Impact (the Heroic Phase) to Recovery. Programs must anticipate changes in needs and adjust accordingly. Some of these adjustments can mean changes in partnerships and even changes in the mix of personnel at each phase. A program may be on target and effective one month and fading and seemingly irrelevant the next. One can misinterpret that the survivors' needs have diminished. Slackening of a need for that program can be confused with a decline in overall needs of the survivor. More likely, the need hasn't diminished. It has changed, and we need different tools or an adjustment in current tools to remain effective.
4. Providing A Range Of Strategies
Disaster recovery programs can be as diverse as the community of survivors needing to be served. When disaster recovery programs were first developed, over two-plus decades ago, the "best fit" model was crisis intervention, which evolved from the suicide and crisis intervention hotline movement (McGee, 1974). The crisis intervention model offered an alternative to individual or group therapy. If you will recall, an earlier example was given of an unsuccessful attempt by a community mental health center to help the survivors of a train wreck using office-based group therapy.
Crisis intervention is still a useful tool. It is most useful in the Heroic and Honeymoon stages. However, most disaster program efforts will go into the much longer Disillusionment Phase, where crisis intervention is more limited as a tool.
In the last two-plus decades, a number of useful, effective tools have been developed. They can be classified along a continuum, based on how "intrusive" the strategy is to the survivor. The least intrusive strategies are those which use existing channels of communication to give information to the general public or a target group. The former might be a newspaper article on the reaction of young children to disasters. The latter might be a version which can be given to day care centers, schools or churches to send out in their newsletters.
Next along the intrusiveness dimension would be strategies which build skills in target populations using natural groups. With school-age children, for example, this can be done indirectly by training teachers on the reactions of children to disaster and providing teachers with useful curricula. Or, it can be done directly, by taking the program directions to the formed groups in their natural settings such as going into the classroom itself.
Next along the continuum are community organization strategies. The goal of these strategies is to "jump start" or empower the community towards its own recovery. This can involve working with community leaders to develop a locator or voluntary register service so survivors in temporary housing can be contacted by and themselves contact former neighbors and friends. It can involve helping to put together a disaster anniversary party to bring people together. Or, it might involve organizing a baby-sitting co-op in a motel where a number of young families are temporarily housed. The continuum of strategies progresses through group and individual counseling and case management services.
5. Tailoring Programs To Target Groups
An easily made mistake is to believe a full range or continuum of services exists only to find that the continuum is only complete when target groups overlap. When these target groups are looked at separately, large holes may be evident. For example, a variety of community education and skill building may be available, but only for children. Variations on these strategies could be developed for older adults as well. Or, a large number of people may be reached, but one or more socioeconomic groups remain under-represented.
If we put all the pieces together, the model has three dimensions. On one dimension are the Phases of Disaster. On another is the Range of Strategies of interventions. On the third dimension are the Special Groups Targeted. The comprehensiveness of programs can be evaluated if with each group and, at each phase, we have a full continuum of strategies.
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REFERENCES Freeman, Douglas J.; Wilson, Karl; Thigpen, Joseph (1974). Assessing intention to die in self-injury behavior. In: Psychological assessment of suicidal risk. Neuringer, Charles ; Oxford, England: Charles C Thomas.
Heffeman, J. B., & Heffernan, W. D. (1986). Impact of the farm crisis on rural families and communities. The Rural Sociologist, 6, 160-170 .
Lebedun, Morty; Wilson, Karl E (1989). Planning and integrating disaster response. ; In: Psychosocial aspects of disaster. Gist, Richard; Lubin, Bernard ; Oxford, England: John Wiley & Sons, pp. 268-279.
Maslow, A. H. (1943). Conflict, frustration, and the theory of threat. Journal of Abnormal & Social Psychology, 38, pp. 81-86.
McGee, Richard K. (1974). Crisis intervention in the community. Oxford, England: University Park , xii, 307 pp.
Mermelstein, Joanne S. (Oct 1987). Criteria of rural mental health Directors in adopting farm crisis programming innovation. Dissertation Abstracts International, Vol 48(4-A), pp. 1013-1014.
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RECOMMENDED READING
Emotional Recovery After Natural Disasters: How to Get Back to Normal Life (An Idyll Arbor Personal Health Book)
by Ilana Singer
Editorial Review
From the Publisher
It’s normal, after you have been in a disaster, to be lost and hurting. You just suffered a tremendous blow, probably larger than you can comprehend. Your whole world has changed. Many of the people, places and things in your life has changed. No matter how hard you try, you can’t put everything back the way it was.
However, you can create a good, new life. You can rebuild the relationships with your family and friends. First, though, you need to regain the most important aspect of your life, your emotional stability.
This book is filled with practical information and tactics for victims of natural disasters and the people who work with them. There are tested, successful suggestions including examples of what to do and what not to do as part of recovering from natural disasters and returning to normal life.
From the Author
A new book release, gives more than simple advice from a grief counselor. This easy-to-read book is filled with practical information and tactics for victims of natural disasters and the people who work with them. Tested, successful directions include examples of what to do and what not to do, all part of recovering from trauma and returning to normal life.
We meet six-year old Dominique, traumatized by the Northridge Earthquake, who needs solutions to her anguish, not theories or explanations. Parents, teachers, and doctors learn easy, practical measures to help relieve a child’s fearfulness.
Hank, a firefighter is recovering from smoke inhalation. His wife, Joyce, sits at his bedside as he recovers. For weeks, horrific memories of the Vietnam War interweave with images of being trapped by the Oakland firestorm. We learn how trauma effects emergency workers and their families, and how depression is often a normal reaction.
Through these and other stories of families, teens, and seniors, myths are uncovered and readers get sound new direction: Avoid anyone, psychologists, tv experts, and do-good advisers, who say you must "relive" and "go into" your anguish or you won’t recover. It is one thing to recall past horrors from a safe distance of many years, it is quite another to relive shocking events while recovering from the current one.
Victims and non-victims alike learn the frequently overlooked signs of trauma and what to do during the acute phase of emotional shock. Coping and moving beyond the acute phase works best when you use the right "tactics," tactics that are found is this book. These tactics tell you what to do to build the strategies you need. They offer a solution, not a philosophy, differing from traditional counseling in three profound ways: Putting you in charge, making you the expert on your needs, and letting you devise your own solutions.
From the Inside Flap
In Memory
To those who dedicated their lives to the emergency services: Alex John (Alec) Gillies, Vancouver Fire Department, Vancouver British Columbia Donald John (John) Gillies, Vancouver Police Department, Vancouver, British Columbia John Angus (Angie) Gillies, Vancouver Police Department, Vancouver, British Columbia
About the Author
Ilana Singer is a Professor of C-CTherapy® and co-owner of the Center for Counter-Conditioning Therapy in Oakland, California. Her work at the Center, a non-medical mental health clinic, covers mental trauma and all other mental health problems. As a Clinical Ethnologist, she works in the field of aberrant human behavior, teaching people more efficient ways to mentally cope. Her methodology applies a non-cognitive treatment design based on C- CTherapy®. As a licensed psychotherapist, she aided Oakland-Berkeley firestorm victims while they coped with their mental/emotional trauma and rebuilt their lives. Her work included three years of writing "The Therapist Column," which was published in the East Bay Phoenix journal for the firestorm community. She interviewed victims of the Loma Prieta and Northridge earthquakes, Hurricanes Andrew and Opal and the Midwest floods. Also, she has debriefed police officers, firefighters and other emergency workers. She has treated personnel of large and small businesses who have suffered emotional trauma ranging from bank robberies to suicides to vehicular accidents. Her work in the trauma field has been reported by The LA Times, Detroit News, McCall's, KPIX-TV and KCBS and NPR radio. Putnam Press, University of Illinois Press, Troll Communications, Conari Press, The California Therapist; Coping Magazine, and Lilith Magazine have published her non-fiction writings.She holds a master's degree in the human behavior field, is a clinical member of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists and has practiced in both the private and nonprofit sectors since 1972. She is the mother of two grown daughters and is currently working on a book for and about women.
Book Description
Introduction During the first two to four weeks after any disaster, workers rush to fix collapsed bridges and freeways, utility crews replace broken poles, gas lines and power lines while water crews repair water supplies and sewers. The Red Cross, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Salvation Army set up shelters and food lines, all working to repair the infrastructure and establish order from chaos. But engineers can't fix people, nor can retrofitted buildings heal the trauma that survivors of natural disasters experience.
Disaster survivors need more than simple advice from a grief counselor. They need a mental mechanism to cope with their emotional trauma. If you are a disaster victim, this book provides you with that mental mechanism. If you have a relative or friend who has been in a natural disaster, this book will help you understand what the person is going through and how you can help with the healing process.
Coping and moving beyond the emotional trauma works best when you use the right "tactics," tactics that are found in this book. The six tactics tell you what to do to build the mechanism you need. They offer a solution, not a diagnosis. They belong to a unified psychotherapy, not an eclectic collection of mental health exercises that merely try to make you think differently.
These tactics differ from traditional counseling in three profound ways. First, they help put you in charge of you. You become the expert on your needs and your solutions. Second, unlike traditional counseling theories, these do not rely on a "talking cure." They disprove the notion that to recover and avoid posttraumatic stress disorder, you must relive your horror by repeatedly talking about what you saw, heard and felt. (In fact, this is one of the worst things that you can do.) Third, they refute the counseling and medical notion that you will go through predictable stages of grief recovery before getting over your ordeal.
A human behavior model, not a medical disease model, underpins these six tactics. The human behavior model holds that emotional reactions result from ordinary human characteristics, not pathogens, and that our emotional reaction system is unique and differs from that of any other person. There is no formula to follow. Rather, you can learn to neutralize your emotional upset even during catastrophic circumstances, a position confirmed by three decades of field research at the Center for Counter-Conditioning Therapy®.
Additional Readings at:
Also try looking here for September 11, 2001: A Simple Account for Children.
Videos on Terrorism
Other videos about terrorism
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Contact your local Mental Health Center or
check the yellow pages for counselors, psychologists,
therapists, and other Mental health Professionals in
your area for further information.
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Copyrighted and published by the Rocky Mountain Region Disaster Mental Health Institute. No part of this document may be reproduced without written consent.The Rocky Mountain Region Disaster Mental Health Newsletter is published online weekly by:
Rocky Mountain Region
Disaster Mental Health Institute, Inc.
Box 786
Laramie, WY 82073-0786
Newsletter Online: https://www.angelfire.com/biz3/news
Institute Home Page: https://www.angelfire.com/biz/odoc/rocky.html
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