Normal responses to trauma include anxiety and fear, sleeplessness and restlessness, lack of concentration or troubling thoughts, irritability and anger, a desire for isolation or dread of being alone, nightmares and poor sleep, increased frequency of accidents and mistakes, sadness, depression, guilt, and increased or unusual physical symptoms.

CRITICAL INCIDENT

A critical incident is direct exposure to a traumatic event during which the person experienced, witnessed or learned about an event that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury, or serious threats of harm to oneself or others. The incident must fall outside of a person's ordinary life experience and be perceived as overwhelming.

More about traumatic stress may be found here.

Everyone has a response to trauma. Responses will vary in intensity, often by how close - physically or psychologically - that person was to the event. Someone who heard about a coworker being maimed by a machine on a factory floor would be physically more distant from that event than someone who observed the accident. Someone who was previously injured in an accident may be psychologically closer to the trauma - and possibly have a more intense reaction than someone who witnessed it.

DEBRIEFING

A Critical Incident Debriefing is a structured group meeting of people exposed to trauma with the purpose of clarifying the incident, discussing and understanding responses, helping people feel less isolated and more grounded in reality, and educating them on how they can get help if they need it. A typical Debriefing may last from 45 to 90 minutes. Although it is recommended that people exposed to trauma be asked to attend the beginning of the session, after Mr. Peterson introduces himself and explains the structure of the meeting, he will invite participants to leave if they do not wish to stay. No one will be required to remain if they want to leave and no one will be required to speak if they wish to remain silent. The debriefer will gently ask people who appear to be in distress if they would like to leave, and will ask to meet with them separately. To maintain healthy professional boundaries, employees and supervisors are always debriefed separately. To promote comfort and participation, groups are typically no larger than 15 - 20 participants.

GRIEF DEBRIEFING

It is always best to conduct a debriefing between 24 to 72 hours following a critical incident. Sometimes circumstances do not allow this. A debriefing is usually no longer appropriate after 5-7 days because some people have now "moved on" and the intervention may be considered disruptive by them. If you want an intervention in the a week or more following a Critical Incident, Mr. Peterson will conduct a Grief Debriefing instead.

A Grief Debriefing follows a format similar to a debriefing but it focuses on the grief of employees in response to circumstances that were either tragic but not traumatic (for example, everyone knows a coworker is struggling with cancer and eventually they die) or circumstances were traumatic but occurred weeks in the past. Grief Debriefing is not grief counseling. It's a structured group to help participants understand the grief process and how it will affect them as they grieve.

The content of this group is different because grief is universal: a painful but ordinary experience.

LAW ENFORCEMENT DEBRIEFING EXPERTISE
RESPONDING TO TRAUMATIC STRESS
BACK TO PREVIOUS PAGE
BACK TO THE TOP