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David L. Meyer
Disaster Mental Health Institute
Vermillion, SD 57069
Existing research on crisis intervention with emergency response personnel will be reviewed and suggestions offered for intervention techniques based on this research. Participants will explore the characteristics of emergency workers as a group and learn information to assist crisis interveners in effectively working with this population. Discussion of who joins the profession of emergency workers, worker culture, job stress and experience all affect how the emergency worker will interact with mental health professionals following a traumatic event. Without taking these population differences into consideration, optimum benefit of crisis intervention could be lost. This information is derived through the compilation and expansion of research conducted over the past 25 years in the field of disaster psychology.
This lecture focuses on daily stressors and working through traumatic experiences rather than on pathology. Although significant numbers of emergency response personnel are diagnosed with pathology, it is believed that many more individuals are left to cope with a decreased quality of life due to their on-the-job experiences.
Factors found to influence stress reaction in emergency response personnel include administrative daily job stress, social and family support, pay status, experience, gender, and culture. Important in crisis intervention, is the rapport that is built upon knowledge and understanding of emergency response personnel and their culture. Based on what is known about emergency response personnel, crisis intervention is helpful when a problem solving therapeutic technique is utilized. This is logically based and similar to how emergency response personnel function on the job, keeping them in their comfort zone. This type of intervention does not have to follow specific exposure to trauma but can be provided to assist in working through daily stressors and accumulated or chronic stress.
This type of intervention follows a structure beginning with discussion of cognitions, delving into emotions, and then back to cognitions including normalization and psycho-education. Prophylactic strategies such as positive administrative planning, sensitive staff practices, and integration of psychological care into monthly meetings are important long term interventions.
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