Respond to the following in a minimum of 175 words:
Natural disasters are very unpredictable and can strike at any time. Some communities have an established crisis response team and crisis intervention plan, while other communities may not be as prepared. There are times when a crisis response team is activated at a moment’s notice without any plan in place. For the following discussion, consider how you might handle being a part of a newly activated team that has little to no direction on what type of crisis response to implement.
You work for an agency where a natural disaster has struck in your current community. (Choose a natural disaster that is relevant to your local area to use as an example, such as an earthquake, flooding, fires, tornado, hurricane, snow, etc.). You and your team are meeting to decide the best way to support individuals in crisis (e.g., set up a mobile crisis center team to respond in person, create a telehealth crisis hotline to reach people remotely). Justify your position using scholarly resources and data from your local area.
• Which response would you choose? Why?
• Which treatment model do you think is most appropriate in this situation? Why?
• What ethical considerations should you make in this situation?
• How does your geographical area, the characteristics of your community, and availability of resources influence your approach to a response strategy?
Respond to the following classmates in a minimum of 175 words each:
SW classmate
I am choosing an earthquake as my local disaster, and a mobile crisis outreach team as my response. I live in Utah, and an earthquake is an expected occurrence. Over 90% of Utah’s population live in an active earthquake zone (“The Great Utah Shakeout,” 2022). I chose the mobile crisis outreach team approach because mental health help can be sent into the community when the need is greatest. Early mental health help can help prevent adverse reactions later. The goal would be to de-escalate any mental health crises as well as provide psychoeducation, as described in the required reading about CAHOOTS (Climer & Gicker, 2021).
Some ethical considerations would be understanding culturally different responses to disaster and crisis, and coming into contact with friends and family. Being culturally aware would help us understand different levels of reaction to crisis and willingness to talk with counselors. Hopefully, showing this cultural awareness would help individuals be willing to talk with us at all. Also, coming into contact with friends and family would necessitate discretion, informing those individuals of their rights to confidentiality, and letting another team or person serve as a counselor to friends and family if possible.
The treatment model I would use is trauma-focused CBT. Trauma-focused CBT has been shown to alleviate emotional distress immediately after a crisis by helping individuals identify their thoughts, feelings, and needs. Through trauma-focused CBT positive and adaptive responses to disaster can be taught and encouraged. Current needs are assessed, which when addressed, greatly help prevent future maladaptive responses to disaster, such as PTSD. Adverse outcomes can be lessened or perhaps prevented when trauma-focused CBT is utilized as soon as possible after a disaster (Ramirez de Arellano et al., 2014).
A characteristic of my community is that it values preparedness and is already organized into emergency response networks through each city that report to the state. The community has various apps, one is called SafeUT, to help manage mental health and provide access to hotlines (“Community Crisis and Intervention Services,” 2022). This influenced my approach to responding to an earthquake, as the organizations in place facilitate sending out mobile teams by being able to provide vehicles and personnel. Also, the public is familiar with the existing crisis intervention and emergency preparedness models, which lends credibility.
Climer, B. A., & Gicker, B. (2021). CAHOOTS: A model for prehospital mental health crisis intervention. Psychiatric Times, 38(1), 15.
Community Crisis Intervention & Support Services. (2022). https://healthcare.utah.edu/hmhi/programs/crisis-diversion/
Ramirez de Arellano, M. A., Lyman, D. R., Jobe-Shields, L., George, P., Dougherty, R. H., Daniels, A. S., Ghose, S. S., Huang, L. & Delphin-Rittmon, M. E. (2014, May). Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Assessing the Evidence. Psychiatric Services, 65(5), 591-602. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4396183/
The Great Utah ShakeOut. (2022). https://www.shakeout.org/utah/
JB Classmate
Where I live there could be a couple of different natural disasters that could strike at any time and cause a terrible crisis. In the area surrounding where I live there have been several wildfires in the past 1-2 years. Even living in a rural area there are many lives that could be altered significantly. Even destroy their livelihood. The outer areas are farmers and raise cattle. After a wildfire spread and was in the process of devesting a large amount of the community, I would set up a crisis center for those affected. In times like these the community comes together and give charity and support where it is needed. Some of the religious groups would come help making sure the people do not feel helpless and alone. There are agencies and organizations that would be quick to addressing what they can. This event is considered a situational crisis where Psychoanalytic Theory would be appropriate. The clients affected by this event may have gone from having everything to nothing in the blink of an eye. This would cause an imbalance in their emotions and thought process. Treatment including lowering the ego strength and increase the coping skills. In this case it could not be as effective to use Existential Theory, the client would not be very open focusing on self-development yet or see their crisis as a kind of opportunity. It would be too soon to apply the Humanistic Approach even though self-acceptance and trust need to be developed after experiencing such deprivation. CBT would be adequate for treating people in this scenario. Defining the problem, correct through alternative ways may have to be done for different problems they are and will be facing from the fire. The theory to apply during first interaction would be Brief Therapy. The goal would be to help the client regain functioning and support them by identifying their strengths along with advocating available resources for such situations.
Reference:
Kanel, K. (2018). A guide to crisis intervention (6th ed.). p. 39-41.
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