Disaster

Post-disaster Resilience: Who Survives Better?

In recent years, many disaster response experts and mental health researchers have switched their focus from looking exclusively at at-risk populations in the aftermath of an emergency to asking, “What are the protective factors?” “What situations, experiences, or personal traits help people to come through a traumatic incident with greater resilience?” First, let’s clear what […]

Common Stages of Disaster Recovery

Disasters and mass disruptive events can be extremely unpredictable and chaotic. Even though that is a valid characterisation of catastrophe, disaster experts have discerned a general pattern or cycle of phases that a community and the individuals in it go through from the time of impact of a disaster to establishing a newly reconstructed life. […]

Principles of Psychological First Aid

Psychological First Aid is a means of providing psychosocial support to individuals and families immediately after a disaster, terrorist or traumatic event, or other emergency. It consists of a set of helping actions which are systematically undertaken in order to reduce initial post-trauma distress and to support short- and long-term adaptive functioning. Based on the […]

Critical Incident Counselling

Over time, the distinction between the three terms, stress, traumatic stress, and crisis, have become blurred, thus numerous professionals started using these terms synonymously. Some authors specifically indicate that they deal with both stress and developmental crisis, but do not make distinctions between these terms/concepts. Others define their work as dealing with crisis, but take […]