Psychological First Aid Helps in Any Stressful Situation
Psychological first aid is useful for dealing with daily stressors as well as traumatic stress, according to Robin Gurwitch (bio).
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If we think about psychological first aid, we generally think about psychological first aid being implemented in areas where there's been a natural disaster, for example, Hurricane Katrina or any of the recent weather related disasters. We may think about after the Deep Horizon oil spill, ideal for PFA. Nine-eleven certainly is a time. So any kind of event that affects a whole community. But I think, too, you can use PFA just in day-to-day stressors. It may be, "What do I do? How do I help support someone after their grandmother died? How do I help support someone that may be having a hard time? How do I support a student in school if they've had a hard time with some — with maybe their house was foreclosed? What can I do to help?" So there are myriad — as many traumatic events as you can think about, that's probably as many opportunities to provide psychological first aid.
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Excerpted from an interview at CBITS Summit 2012 in Santa Monica, CA.