Category Archives: trauma

Impacted Nurse: "Critical Incident Stress Debriefings" Re-Examined

Follow LJF97 on Twitter Tweet  A look at psychological first aid replacing critical incident debriefs. may tell us a bit more about assuming that all not people respond the same way to a given incident – or to a given therapy.  Or maybe they do. From the brilliant blog  Impacted Nurse, quoting in turn from Vaughan Bell at Mind Hacks:

“This technique is now not recommended because we know it is at best useless and probably harmful, owing to the fact that it seems to increase trauma in the long-term.

Instead, we use an approach called psychological first aid, which, instead of encouraging people to talk about all their emotions, really just focuses on making sure people feel secure and connected.  
Psychological first aid is actually remarkable for the fact that it contains so little psychology, as you can see from the just released psychological first aid manual from the World Health Organisation.
You don’t need to be a mental health professional to use the techniques and they largely consist of looking after the practical needs of the person plus working toward making them feel safe and comfortable.

No processing of emotions, no ‘disaster narratives’, no fancy psychology, its really just being practical, gentle and kind.”

Via Mindhacks – Escaping from the past of disaster psychology. As noted above, via Impacted Nurse.

 

NFL claims that concussions have no lasting effect

The NFL has been asserting that concussions don’t, in fact, pose a long-term health risk. This means that they’ve got access to health data no one else has – but it’s so secret that they can’t discuss it. From today’s Times, “For Jets, Silence on Concussions Signals Unease” by Alan Schwarz:

Laveranues Coles is equal parts receiver and raconteur, the New York Jets player who talks when no one else will. But upon hearing one subject — concussions, specifically the two he has sustained in the past year — he immediately lost his smile, and looked around the locker room to see who might be listening.

“I can’t talk about that,” he said. “You know I can’t talk about that.”

Then he walked away.

We note that the Jets receive government subsidies from the state of New Jersey, and the NFL exists, we understand, by virtue of a government antitrust waiver. Those matters entirely aside from any moral or legal responsibility. Back to the Times piece: Continue reading