Providing Emotional Support

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Chapter 13

• Providing Emotional Support

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Introduction

• An organization is defined by the people who make
  it up
• Recent push for improving our health and wellness
• The Fire and Life Safety Initiatives have devoted
  an initiative to address responders physical
  health (Initiative 6) and a separate initiative
  to their emotional health (Initiative 13)
• Note the ties between the physical and
  psychological sides of human beings

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Life Safety Initiative 13

• Firefighters and their families must have access
  to counseling and psychological support

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Life Safety Initiative 13

• STRESS
• Overview
• Physical strains
• Emotional strains
• Adrenaline
• Long term effects
• Short term effects
• Cont.

Photo courtesy of Bob Gahr
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Life Safety Initiative 13

• STRESS
• Coping with stress
• Must be able to accept the facts
• Must be prepared
• Impossible to not be affected
• Alcohol abuse
• Drug abuse
• Cont.

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Life Safety Initiative 13

• STRESS
• Failure to cope with stress
• Likely to bring on severe depression
• Police officer study in 2008
• Must expose causes, signs and symptoms of stress

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Life Safety Initiative 13

• POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (PTSD)
• Overview
• Only officially labeled in last 30 years
• Early human stresses
• Websters 1913 dictionary
• Railway spine
• Cont.

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Life Safety Initiative 13

• POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (PTSD)
• Overview
• Acute stress disorder (ASD)
• Precursor to PTSD
• Generally lasts less than a week
• Some proceed with no intervention
• Cont.

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Life Safety Initiative 13

• POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (PTSD)
• Overview
• PTSD could include
• Avoidance
• Seclusion
• Flashbacks
• Change in eating and sleeping habits
• Cont.

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Life Safety Initiative 13

• POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (PTSD)
• Signs and symptoms
• Categorization
• Re-experiencing
• Avoidance
• Hyperarousal
• Cont.

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Life Safety Initiative 13

• POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (PTSD)
• Treatment
• Psychotherapy
• Counseling as an avenue for healing
• Traditional psychotherapy
• Group therapy
• Individual therapy
• Cont.

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Life Safety Initiative 13

• POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (PTSD)
• Group therapy
• Overview
• Brief group therapy
• Bottling it up proven to be ineffective
• Discussion encourages healing
• Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change
• Cont.

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Life Safety Initiative 13

• POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (PTSD)
• Group therapy
• Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)
• Meetings
• Similarities to fire departments
• Single share
• Cross-talk
• Closing
• Cont.

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Life Safety Initiative 13

• POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (PTSD)
• Group therapy
• Critical incident stress
• management (CISM)
• Pre-incident CISM
• Incident response
• Post-incident response
• AA and CISM differences
• Cont.

Courtesy of Scott Beveridge, Observer-Reporter
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Life Safety Initiative 13

• POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (PTSD)
• Group therapy
• Psychological first aid (PFA)
• Effectiveness of CISM
• Effectiveness of PFA
• Primary psychological victims
• Secondary psychological victims
• Cont.

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Life Safety Initiative 13

• POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (PTSD)
• Individual therapy
• Mental health support
• Employee assistance programs (EAP)
• Chaplains
• Available
• Approachable
• Adaptable

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Life Safety Initiative 13

• THE FUTURE
• Overview
• Relative anonymity
• Texting
• Complete anonymity
• Web based program
• Support system
• Include family members

Courtesy of Erica Ziegler
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Summary

• Psychological stress of emergency scenes can be
  as severe as the physical stresses
• CISM has evolved into a successful form of group
  therapy
• We need to research, obtain, and implement
  instruments such as CISM, EAP, and chaplaincy
  programs
• Improve the tools we have, and invent the ones
  that dont yet exist

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