Intervention for Terrorist Attack Victims Reveals Poor Referrals to Psychological Services
March 10th, 2010
Across the general population and within specific groups such as the survivors of terrorist attacks and other traumatic situations, access to quality psychotherapeutic care and counseling can be limited, even in developed areas. Hoping to help discover whether general practice physician referrals were effective, and investigating how survivors of the 2007 bombing attacks in London were faring, a research team from University College London has recently performed an intervention to locate and assess the survivors. With the help of public records, witness accounts, and other pertinent information, the team found that around a third of survivors were experiencing symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, and that only four percent of the entire group had been referred to psychological services, suggesting a serious need for more effective identification and referral systems.
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But even when there are referrals for services how do you know that people are going to take advantage of them? When people need help that may come up one day down the road or one year. Who knows when those issues are going to arise and it is a lot to ask for the govt or NHS to follow someone for that long and expect to make a diagnosis about if they need menatl health counseling or not. I am not saying that it is ok for them to drop the ball when it comes to helping citizens but there comes a time when we have to be responsible for helping ourselves and maybe this is one of those times. We have to do a better job of not only recognizing when we might need help but when others may need that as well, and perhaps it is more our jobs as the general population to make sure that we get the care that we need instead of always relying on someone else to do that for us.
I am shocked to hear that such a low percentage of people actually went ahead to seek treatment…its like people think that nothing is going to happen to them-and that is usually due to one reason and one reason only-the general population has no real or no education whatsoever regarding mental health.
…and I thought the government and the various agencies push to the aid of victims of such attacks and ensure that they recieve the adequate care!
expecting that is not much,but the government and its various agencies have failed to provide even that and also in directing the people towards what should be a suitable road to recovery.
The key is recognizing when you need help and making an effort to strive for self help and improvement over the situation. This is definitely a case where family doctors should step in as well to get people the proper care and therapy that they may not be able to offer.
There has been a huge effort since 2007 in traininig both professionals and peer volunteers on Critical Incident Stress management and debrieings to better facilitate trauma/disaster response.
There was a huge response to the Hati eathquake. There were many Humanitarian missions and many companies provided Critical Incident Stress Debriefing through their respective employee assistance programs. I myself facilitated 5 debriefings to Hatian employees who live in South Florida and were affected by the tragedy. Sadly, even with immediate response, the offering of free employment assistance programs, few followed through with professional help. I beleive this is part due to the continued stigma of getting help for emotional health. The world needs to learn the Brain is an organ just like the Heart! It is ok to get professional help for symptoms that affect one’s daily functioning.
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