CISM

Is there anyone in here that is on a Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) team? I have been on the NW Arkansas team for about 7 years. If so, how to you get people to talk about their 'feelings'? Also, does your department require a debriefing when something real bad happens?
Thanks,
Tana

0 members like this

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ben Waller on November 19, 2009 at 1:46am

John,

I'm not discounting the possibility of altruistic motives for CISM team members.

However, did anyone study anything other than the debrifee's short-term opinions that the CISM "helped"? Does your team include mental health professionals? Did anyone realize that there are other options to overcoming survivor guilt than CISM - maybe options that are better for the members' long-term health?

I have personal experience with CISM, too. The teams in my personal experience were not motivated by anything but an honest desire to help. In retrospect, the CISM was the worst possible thing we could have done. It reinforced the trauma, kept us endlessly replaying it in our minds, created false memories and unnecessary stress reinforcement loops, and ended with several members who had relatively peripheral exposure to the really shocking parts of the call in question having long-term mental health and employment issues while the ones who were literally ankle-deep in the most shocking parts and who refused CISM are still mentally healthy and still career fire and EMS providers nearly two decades later. At the time, we thought it was great, but long term, it was a bad thing.

CISM kept a lot of people focused backwards on the trauma rather than on a forward look at overcoming it. It was the best we had at the time, or so we thought. Now I know better, and I heartily wish it had not been available because it took a horrible situation, prolonged it, and made it worse for all concerned.

Put a few years between you, look back at your incident and the CISM with an open mind, and you might find your opinion changing.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by John Crabbe on November 19, 2009 at 2:17am

Does your team include mental health professionals? Did anyone realize that there are other options to overcoming survivor guilt than CISM - maybe options that are better for the members' long-term health?

Yes as yes.

As I mentioned the CISM is not about reliving the trauma and there is a time window involved as well for a CISD. Perhaps, things are just done so completely different here or whatever, but again, I never seen any ulterior motive as mentioned. I never seen people encouaged to talk. Even the CISD after or LODD, the CISM never even talked anything about the details of the call, nor did really anyone else who spoke. It wasn't about reliving the trauma. For the most part, the CISM was there to again make people aware of the phases of grief, that some feelings are normal and could happen, to encourage to seek EAP for more assistance, and to discourage the temptation to seek drinking or drugs, and just a general awareness to look out for each other.

It has been a few years after these incidents and I don't have a problem talking about them and my opinion has not changed. You and I have different perspectives on this and unfortunately I can't really state much more than what I have about how things work here. I can understand if there was talk on details and so forth, but such things were never encouraged by the CISM members, nor brought up in any case, instead I have heard one CISM member even point that out and such things are better left to one on one. I don't have a vast experience with CISM or the training involved or even different teams, but it sounds like we have had very different experiences with them.