NCJ Number
199451
Date Published
2003
Length
23 pages
Annotation
By presenting an understanding of what a disaster and crisis is, how children and adolescents process trauma, and what crisis intervention accomplishes, this chapter examines strategies and techniques to assist America’s youth in dealing with critical incident stress, specifically critical incident stress management (CISM).
Abstract
Since the terrorist attacks of September, 11, 2001, on the United States, the world as once known no longer exists. The world is viewed as dangerous, unpredictable, and uncontrollable. Stress research indicates that the more unpredictable an event is and the more uncontrollable an event is, the greater the stress an individual will experience. For children, the digression from a world of predictability to a world of uncertainty is traumatic. There are strategies and techniques available to guide and assist youth in regaining a sense of control. This chapter, begins by presenting an overall understanding of disaster and crisis. An understanding of crisis intervention as providing acute psychological support to those in the midst of a crisis is then discussed. It then becomes necessary to understand the trauma experienced by youth in the context of their developmental stages and then provide the appropriate type of intervention at the appropriate time. Some reactions to trauma by youth include post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and acute stress disorder (ASD). A technique and strategy used to return individuals to their pretrauma level of functioning is critical incident stress management (CISM) which works toward this end. CISM consists of a variety of techniques serving to diminish the probability of developing PTSD. Three CISM techniques are discussed and seen as serving the needs of the general population and schools: preincident education, the crisis management briefing (CMB), and the critical incident stress debriefing (CISD). References