Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD)

Crisis management and crisis intervention are essential to crisis response but serve different aims and methods. Crisis management involves macro-level planning and measures to avoid, prepare for, respond to, and recover from crises, critical situations, and tragedies. It entails creating protocols, rules, and procedures to handle different emergencies. Crisis management preserves stability and functioning under chaos by limiting the effect of crises on people, organizations, and communities. Examples include risk assessment, emergency planning, communication, resource allocation, and stakeholder cooperation (James & Gilliland, 2017). Crisis management is proactive and methodical and aims to prevent corporate or community crises from escalating.

However, crisis intervention is a short-term, action-oriented method that helps people in crisis immediately. Crisis intervention addresses urgent needs and concerns, unlike crisis management, which focuses on larger tactics and prevention. It entails analyzing the person or group’s circumstances, finding coping methods and resources, and giving emotional support, problem-solving aid, and practical direction to get them through the crisis. Crisis intervention stabilizes people, reduces anxiety, and restores control (James & Gilliland, 2017). Trained experts, including mental health professionals, social workers, and crisis responders, provide it at hospitals, schools, community centres, and crisis hotlines.

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Several crisis intervention models may be used in human services, each with its viewpoints and methods for dealing with crises. Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD), the ABC Model of Crisis Intervention, and Psychological First Aid (PFA) are three popular approaches.

Crisis Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD) is a systematic group intervention to assist people in dealing with the emotional consequences of catastrophic incidents. CISD, developed by Mitchell and Everly, allows people to discuss their ideas, feelings, and experiences in a safe and supportive atmosphere to avoid PTSD. This technique incorporates a professional facilitator leading participants through introduction, fact, thinking, response, symptom, instruction, re-entry, and follow-up phases. CISD promotes resilience and coping by normalizing emotions, giving information, and fostering social cohesiveness (Wang & Gupta, 2020). While commonly utilized, CISD has been criticized for its propensity to worsen discomfort in certain people and may not be suited for all settings or demographics.

Affect, Behavior, and Cognition are the three main components of Albert Roberts and Allen Ottens’ ABC Model of Crisis Intervention. This paradigm helps practitioners comprehend and manage a crisis’s emotional and cognitive aspects. Practitioners evaluate and handle the crisis-related emotional reaction in the Affect phase. The Behavior phase focuses on observable activities to ensure safety and avoid injury. Practitioners assist people in comprehending and reframing the dilemma in the Cognition phase. The ABC Model is adaptable to varied crises and stresses on immediate problems and underlying cognitive processes (Wang & Gupta, 2020). However, detractors say the concept may oversimplify crisis circumstances and ignore cultural considerations.

The National Child Traumatic Stress Network and the National Center for PTSD established the flexible and comprehensive Psychological First Aid (PFA) paradigm for emergency crisis assistance. PFA is a collection of ideas and activities that foster safety, calm, connectivity, self-efficacy, and optimism following a disaster. Listening non-judgmentally, identifying needs, meeting basic bodily and emotional requirements, and connecting people with resources are key to this paradigm (Wang & Gupta, 2020). PFA is effective early in a crisis and adaptive to different contexts and groups. PFA is a helpful first step and does not replace professional mental health care.

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Through the comparison of human services crisis and intervention approaches, one important lesson that emerged for me is the significance of flexibility and adaptation in responding to varied crisis circumstances. The organized Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD), comprehensive ABC Model of Crisis Intervention, and flexible Psychological First Aid (PFA) have pros and cons. However, no model fits all crises or populations. Recognizing crises’ dynamic and unexpected nature, practitioners require a varied skill set to adjust their responses to each scenario and person involved. A single model may not represent the complexity of


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