Public Safety
Public Safety Overview
There are things that everyone can do before a disaster strikes to better prepare themselves for the psychological impact of a catastrophic event. The array of additional challenges that you, as public safety personnel, face as a result of the unique role you fulfill in times of crisis necessitates a discussion of planning and preparedness that focuses on things that you should be mindful of in making preparations. We hope that by taking up such a discussion, we can strengthen your ability to be ready to respond to a disaster by equipping you in the following ways:
1) Educating you about the potential psychological consequences of disasters.
2) Highlighting some of the concerns that public safety personnel face in the event of a disaster, and by pointing to some ways in which they can be addressed beforehand.
3) Directing you to additional resources that can help in preparing for disaster relief operations.
This site seeks to achieve the above stated measures by emphasizing disaster preparation and planning in a number of ways:
- Suggesting ways in which you and your family can prepare in case you have to deploy for disaster relief operations.
- Familiarizing you with some of the psychological risks that public safety personnel face. Forewarned is forearmed!
- Discussing how you can prepare a disaster deployment kit to have nearby in case you are summoned to help.
- Acquainting you with the training facilities and institutions that offer disaster preparedness training to individuals and agencies.
We are glad to see that you have visited our site, and we hope that you will take advantage of what it has to offer. Please take some time to explore the resources offered here. You may also want to have a look at some of the external links listed below.
Tips for ER Workers - This 3 page pdf by SAMHSA focuses mostly on stress prevention and management for individual public safety workers, as well as the role of the agency or organization in accomplishing the two aforementioned goals.
This article from www.policeOne.com is titled Critical incidents: Myths and realities. The article does a nice job of dispelling some of the more common misconceptions about the psychological impact of disasters.