Critical Issue Analysis - Psychological Debriefing

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Critical Issue Analysis - Psychological Debriefing

Psychological debriefing is one form of therapy that is used when traumatic events occur in an individual’s life.  Individuals who encounter a traumatic event may become distressed and risk developing a psychological illness. Psychological debriefing is an intervention process in which survivors are urged to recount and relive the incident in order to avoid long-term consequences and traumatic stress responses (Halgin, 2009).  There are some claims that psychological debriefing is helpful while other claims indicate that there is no therapeutic value in debriefing but it causes no injury to the individual and others who claim that psychological debriefing increases the risk of the individual developing long-term psychological symptoms following a certain events.  Some companies, in fear of litigation, require employees who have experienced a traumatic event to undergo psychological debriefing.  

Debriefing has its beginnings in the military and is a form of psychological “first aid”.  General Marshall advocated the use during World War II to gather information from the troops about the fighting day but noticed that debriefing had a morale-building effect as well.  Debriefing became popular again in 1983 when J.T. Mitchell published “When disaster strikes, the critical incident stress debriefing process”.  Mitchell described the debriefing process known as critical incident stress debriefing (CISD) which forms part of the wider strategy called critical incident stress management (CISM).  The process of debriefing begins after a traumatic event and is a seven-stage process that occurs in a group session 24-72 hours after the traumatic event.  These group sessions are facilitated by trained mental health workers.

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Debriefing is different from an early intervention program.  Early intervention, also called restorative treatment, is treatment available to individuals that request intervention following a traumatic experience.  Early intervention is goal orientated, evidence-based, and explicit.  Early intervention is often used in the treatment of Acute Stress Disorder (ASD) and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).  The goal for early intervention is to restore the individual to a pre-trauma state of functioning.  This is different that debriefing, where the goal is to reduce or mitigate the negative impact of an event through preventative intervention immediately following the trauma.

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