Retirement Policies and Support for Emergency Service Personnel: The Transition to Retirement.

The aim of this study was to explore policies and procedures to support employees who retire from the emergency services. Interviews were conducted with participants who were familiar with existing policies and procedures in a large ambulance (n = 8) and fire (n = 6) service in Ireland. Four key themes were identified: (1) "I don't think it's a job at 65 to be running out on an emergency ambulance"; (2) "They do genuinely feel a wee bit isolated"; (3) improving the "cultural shock"; and (4) "I just keep going and hope for the best".

Collateral damage in disaster workers.

Disaster workers are not immune to the negative personal and professional effects of their services at a disaster. For the purposes of this article, the intra and interpersonal disturbances that arise from disaster work are called "collateral damage. " The harmful effects may range from, among other reactions, feelings of disappointment, confusion, resentment, anger; and lack of appreciation to the more serious reactions such as anxiety attacks, severe social withdrawal, substance abuse, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder This article reviews some of the causative factors of personal distress and disruptions to teamwork in disaster relief operations.

Critical decision points in crisis support: using checklists and flow charts in psychological crises.

The field of crisis intervention has grown dramatically during the last hundred years. Many new procedures and techniques have been added to the crisis intervention repertoire. Periodically, providers of crisis intervention, psychological first aid, critical incident stress management, or Peer Support overlook important elements of crisis intervention or make inadvertent mistakes as they attempt to intervene.

Post-action staff support for the Concerns of Police Survivors Organization (COPS).

This concept article presents an overview of a post-action staff support (PASS) session that has been effective in meeting many of the emotional needs of a large, diverse group of volunteers who serve as support personnel for grieving family members, significant others, and co-workers at the annual National Police Survivors Conference in the Washington, DC area. This particular approach to the PASS process is not a fixed, rigid approach. Instead, it is adaptable and flexible and it can be altered as necessary to suit specific populations with special needs.

A time for renewal: a lessons-learned review on the role of CISM in caring for missionaries after the Rwandan genocide.

In 1994 more than 800,000 people were killed in the Rwandan genocide. Seventh Day Adventist missionaries were forced to evacuate the country under conditions of extraordinary stress and personal threat. Their Church was faced with the necessity of rapidly developing a spectrum of support services to assist the distressed missionaries and their family members in the immediate aftermath of the catastrophe.

A study of stress affecting police officers in Lithuania.

This research study aims to identify the key stresses encountered by police officers in Lithuania in 2003. A questionnaire was distributed to officers working in police departments throughout Lithuania. The 2003 results were a compared with a similar study carried out among male and female police officers in Lithuania 1999.

A report on the evaluation of the First European Conference on Critical Incident Stress Management organized by the European Office of the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation.

The International Critical Incident Stress Foundation (ICISF) established an office in Europe in 2004. The ICISF European Office (EO) held its first ICISF European Conference on Critical Incident Stress Management on September 27th 2008. The conference was formally evaluated and the results are reported in this article.

From controversy to confirmation: crisis support services for the twenty-first century.

The field of Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM), a comprehensive, integrated, systematic, and multi-component staff support program, developed, expanded in its scope, and spread rapidly with little criticism for over a decade. The next ten years (1996-2006) could be characterized as a period of intense scrutiny and opposition. CISM has recently emerged from the hostile inspection process stronger and more organized, in many ways, than earlier in its history.

A short guide to giving bad news.

Approaching an individual or a family with bad news, but without an appropriate plan to present the information in a structured manner, is almost a guarantee of greater emotional pain and disruption for the recipients of the news. Crisis interveners must develop a strategic plan for the announcement of bad news. That plan should entail a lead-up phase, a transmission phase, and a followup phase.

Innovative, precise, and descriptive terms for group crisis support services: a United Nations initiative.

Terminology borrowed from other disciplines for use in crisis intervention is inadvertently open to misinterpretation and misrepresentation. Misconceptions about terminology are most common when terms are transmitted across social, cultural, national, language, and attitudinal boundaries. Critical Incident Stress Management, which is a subset of crisis intervention, encountered that exact problem with three of its terms: demobilization, defusing, and Critical Incident Stress Debriefing.

Caplan, community, and Critical Incident Stress Management.

Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM), a comprehensive crisis intervention program, is examined from the perspective of Community Psychology. Because CISM adheres to the 5 Principles of Community Psychology and was designed to be adopted and implemented as a systematic intervention embedded within an organization, it is argued that CISM is best understood and evaluated in context as a prevention program rather than simply a crisis intervention "treatment." Recommendations are made for evaluating CISM as a comprehensive intervention-using an Action Research framework encompassing methodological pluralism and multiple stakeholders' definitions of success.

Some thoughts on providing effective mental health critical care for police departments after Line-of-Duty Deaths.

There is no more stressful or emotionally painful event in the professional lives of police officers than a fellow officer's Line-of-Duty Death (LODD). In response to a LODD, crisis teams must apply Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) techniques in a systematic, organized, and responsible manner. Newly formed crisis teams are particularly vulnerable to choosing inappropriate tactics in complex situations.

Characteristics of successful early intervention programs.

A plethora of terms and titles are currently used to describe early intervention programs. The terms "Critical Incident Stress Management Team," "Rapid Response Team," "Community Crisis Response Program," "Critical Incident Stress Team," "Staff Support Team," "Critical Incident Support Team," "Critical Incident Support Services," and "Assaulted Staff Action Program" are among many titles utilized to name a variety of crisis response programs. Additionally, crisis intervention services use different tactics to aim at a wide range of populations from primary victims to community groups, military service personnel, and emergency services responders.

Major misconceptions in crisis intervention.

Crisis intervention and its subset, Critical Incident Stress Management, have experienced a century of successful application across a broad spectrum of populations. Numerous positive outcome studies including Randomized Controlled Trials, controlled studies, and detailed literature reviews attest to its achievements. The success of crisis intervention services has not, however, gone without critical reviews.