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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration
University of Nebraska - Lincoln
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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Disaster Mental Health, Denise Bulling, Tarik Abdel-Monem
Disaster Mental Health, Denise Bulling, Tarik Abdel-Monem
University of Nebraska Public Policy Center: Publications
People have always given aid and comfort to each other during times of disaster. However, attempts to structure and professionalize this assistance are fairly recent developments. Disaster mental health, as an evolving field of practice and study, is a collection of interventions and practices that are designed to address incident-specific stress reactions, rather than ongoing or developmental mental health needs. Traditional mental health practice is based on a medical model, with a clinician seeing a patient in an office setting. Disaster mental health introduces a paradigm shift, requiring that practitioners (clinicians and indigenous helpers) work with individuals and whole communities …