The importance of managing the psychological fallout of crises
Due to frequent flash floods in Pakistan, ineffective water management and infrastructure, a large population of the country is exposed to the dangers of psychological shock and trauma every year and it affects the victims in numerous ways. In this context, an effective crisis intervention plan is critically needed for the affectees.
A crisis occurs when a stressful life event overwhelms an individual’s ability to cope effectively with a perceived challenge or threat. It is seen that in a crisis, psychological homeostasis is disrupted; one’s usual coping mechanisms fail to reestablish homeostasis, and the distress that the crisis caused yields evidence of functional impairment. Critical incidents, however, are sudden, unexpected, often life threatening and time restricted events that overpower an individual’s capacity to react adaptively. Extreme critical incident stressors result in personal crisis, and traumatic distress that lead to Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Floods in Pakistan are an apparent example of extreme critical incident that cause not only personal damage but severe traumatic injury to the victims also.
Victims of frequent traumatic events experience disruptions in the environment, in attachments to others, and in sustaining a persistent meaning in life associated with hyper-vigilance symptoms, sleep disturbance, intrusive recollections of the event and a significant impairment in daily activities. This symptomatology is quiet evident among flood affected victims. Since the floods have swept the country every year since 2010, the pre existing psycho-pathology makes them more susceptible to additional distress in the aftermath of a disaster, increasing the likelihood of post existing psycho-pathology.
To manage the negative symptomatology caused by traumatic events such as floods, a crisis intervention is needed, which should be effective for all types of victims of critical incidents, especially the extreme stressors which causes severe psychological trauma
To manage the negative symptomatology caused by traumatic events such as floods, a crisis intervention is needed, which should be effective for all types of victims of critical incidents, especially the extreme stressors which causes severe psychological trauma. Crisis intervention is defined as the provision of emergency psychological care to victims as to assist those victims in returning to an adaptive level of functioning and to prevent or diminish the potential negative impact of psychological trauma (Everly & Mitchell, 1999).
It is essential to consider that as soon as the calamity hits a certain area, an emergency mental health team should intervene immediately. An emergency mental health (EMH) team mainly comprises psychologists and mental health professionals who have a deep understanding of specific stressors and triggers that elicit certain behaviours and symptoms in the victims. The major objectives of an emergency mental health team (EMH) are to first of all stabilise the environment by diminishing the escalating distress and stabilising and mobilising the resources and support systems to restore the daily order of life. Secondly, alleviation of acute signs and symptoms of distress and re-establishment of adaptive independent functioning of every individual and facilitation of access to a high level of care is imperative.
It is also crucial to make the victims realise their current situation and assist them in using their available resources to regain control over the situation. An intelligent emergency mental health professional knows exactly how to enhance the victims independent functioning by developing their sense of problem solving skills in order to restore their self reliance.
These practitioners assist in crisis intervention and “Critical Incident Stress Management” (CISM) which is a comprehensive crisis intervention system consisting of multiple crisis intervention mechanisms covering the entire gamut of the crisis. The critical incident stress management (CISM) ranges from pre crisis phase through the acute crisis phase leading to the post crisis phase. CISM includes various core elements such as pre crisis preparation, large scale disbandment procedures for public safety, and group crisis management briefings for civilian victims of mass disaster, individual acute intervention, brief small group discussions, Critical Incident Stress Debriefings (CISD), organisational development interventions, and psychological assessments where necessary.
The sufferings caused by floods every year urgently call for the need for extreme preventive and treatment measures in the hands of skilled emergency mental health specialists
The sufferings caused by floods every year urgently call for the need for extreme preventive and treatment measures in the hands of skilled emergency mental health specialists. The CISM model is widely used by various organisations in the United States and is efficient in managing stress originated by traumatic events. Such a model can be beneficial for flood hit areas of our country as well. Individual crisis counseling, group debriefings, family support groups can improve the mental health of the victims and can deal with the intense human suffering, physical as well psychological injury, death of love ones, and negative psychopathology that develops after the disaster.
This model can be used in a cross cultural context amalgamating all the key components that can easily resolve the multifaceted post disaster effects. To eradicate the traumatic stress caused by floods the government of Pakistan should take measureable steps to hire as many mental health professionals as possible to create a sound and useful emergency mental health team comprising of trained counselors and psychologists. Calamities such as these floods are unpredictable and uncontrollable; however, in order to deal with a disastrous situation systematically to diminish all the adverse effects, an organised team effort is indispensable to facilitate the victims psychosocially.
