Wellbeing and Critical Incident Stress

Supporting people and communities is one of the primary roles of an emergency manager. Recognizing the emotional impact of crises on affected populations, responders and support personnel is important to their emotional wellness and overall recovery from an incident. Students examine group behaviour, psychological response to trauma and crisis communication, as well as gain a solid grounding in understanding and managing critical incident stress reactions in people exposed to traumatic events, with emphasis given to the nature of trauma and the mitigation of its impacts. Students explore different types of critical incidents and the associated features of acute, delayed, empathetic and cumulative stress reactions of normal persons exposed to abnormal events, the rescue personality and basic debriefing methodology.