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The psychological effects of life-threatening events can be long-lasting. Read on to learn more about the role of mental health support during emergencies.

Risk Factors of Mental Health Challenges During Emergencies

Family Separation

Depending on the emergency, children might be separated from their caregivers. If there’s a scramble with a crowd, chaos can follow, and people can be displaced. Sometimes, it might be challenging to reunite younger children with their families because of a lack of contact information, and this can lead to psychological effects.

Lack of Safety

Feeling safe is an important human need that improves your quality of life for better mental and physical health. This is why there’s a link between living in an unsafe environment and long-term mental health risks such as anxiety disorders, complex trauma responses and depression. The lack of safety and exposure to multiple emergencies like violent criminal activities are significant risk factors that response units should consider.

Loss of Life

Traumatic events such as witnessing a fatality during a car accident or at the scene of a crime could lead to chronic stress. An incident of this nature might have significant consequences, affecting your feelings and thoughts. Even though your reaction will likely differ from the next person, the impact can be detrimental to your mental health.

Disrupted Livelihoods

If you are a victim of flooding or a burned-down house, your life might be disrupted in ways you can’t imagine. Dealing with the aftermath of meeting your everyday needs, such as having comfortable shelter and a sufficient food supply, can be challenging. These effects may be short or long-term, and these possible interruptions to your daily life can lead to long-lasting stress and trauma.

Post-Traumatic Stress

A life-threatening emergency or witnessing a traumatic event can result in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This disorder can lead to mental and physical changes when you don’t have adequate means to cope with the burden of the trauma. Most importantly, the intense emotional and physical responses from memories of the event require ongoing support and therapy interventions.

The Role of Mental Health Support During Emergencies

Psychological First Aid: At the emergency scene, response units should aim to enhance safety to reduce victims’ negative reactions. Psychological first aid is an effective measure to protect you from further distress. Since emotional trauma isn’t easy to distinguish during an emergency, responders should assist in healthy recovery for improved mental health.

Basic Mental Health Care: Some emergencies could result from mental health emergencies, such as a suicide attempt or a psychotic breakdown. Moreover, the use of substances can result in mental trauma. This requires priority mental health care at the scene to ensure that the situation doesn’t escalate by providing practical strategies like counselling at the scene or hospital. Alternative Interventions

Social Support: The impact of emergencies can span the individual, family, and community. There can be disturbances in the availability of support from your family and friends affected by the same incident. However, a strong support structure improves mental health and well-being after an emergency.

Prioritising Vulnerable Groups: There should be efforts by response units to provide immediate care to children, elderly persons, people with disabilities and pregnant women during emergencies. These groups are most likely to face various challenges when life-threatening incidents occur. If you have vulnerabilities, you might have limitations that might result in traumatic stress afterwards.

Mental health support during emergencies is important. It requires an assessment of risk factors and an understanding from response units that some people might already be prone to pre-existing mental health challenges that affect their everyday lives. Your FREE-to-use iER App provides nationwide access to Social Services when you require 24/7 trauma support during emergencies.