World Mental Health Day: Psychological First Aid

What a great post in relation to World Mental Health Day… very informative… Way to break the stigma by knowing more about mental health and how to deal with mental illness .

I found this post by Kitt @ Kitt O’Malley Love, Learn & Live with Bipolar Disorder. Please check her out, she has a lot of excellent posts.

Psychological first aid (PFA) is a technique designed to reduce the occurrence of PTSD. It was developed by the National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (NC-PTSD), a section of the US Dept. of Veterans Affairs, in 2006. It has been spread by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), the American Psychological Association (APA) and many others. It was developed in a two-day intensive collaboration, involving more than 25 disaster mental health researchers, an online survey of the first cohort that used PFA and repeated reviews of the draft. (Source: PTSD.va.gov)

According to the NC-PTSD, psychological first aid is an evidence-informed modular approach for assisting people in the immediate aftermath of disaster and terrorism to reduce initial distress and to foster short and long-term adaptive functioning. It was used by non-mental health experts, such as responders and volunteers. Other characteristics include non-intrusive pragmatic care and assessing needs. PFA does not necessarily involve discussion of the traumatic event. (Source: Wiki)

For more info about PFA from the World Health Organization, check out “Psychological First Aid: Guide for Field Workers“.

Thanks for sharing, Kitt. 🙂

NAMASTE!

LIVE LAUGH … BELLE PAPILLON

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