Comprehensive psychosocial emergency management promotes recovery

Abstract

Recently published conclusions erroneously criticize early psychological interventions, and more specifically target critical incident stress debriefing (CISD), as ineffectual responses to human needs following emergencies. The assertions may influence some practitioners to reconsider current commitments to providing early crisis support, or other aspects of early psychological interventions, in the first hours and days after an emergency occurs. The arguments used are misleading in that they confuse the distinctions between CISD and other components of early psychological interventions, and seek to impugn the efficacy of CISD with research findings that have methodological flaws and limited generalizability. Theoretically sound approaches to the phenomenology of earliest reactions and early psychological interventions must build upon survivor and community needs in the aftermath of trauma, and upon an understanding of the psychobiological, evolutionarily-determined aspects of traumatic stress within attachment schema. It is now possible to postulate a broader approach to the early psychosocial needs of persons affected by trauma, whether they are survivors, rescuers, or witnesses. Comprehensive Psychosocial Emergency Management utilizes systematic study of the risk and protective factors within the phenomenology of traumatic stress that disrupt processes which otherwise result in dysfunction. Early psychological intervention enhances coping and resilience, and promotes recovery for all.