When you think you are supposed to be strong........
Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) is a confidential opportunity for emergency workers to deal with particularly bad events in a healthy way. We are a team of emergency service workers including Fire, EMS, Police, Nursing, Mental Health Clinicians and/or Clergy members who are specially trained to provide CISM services.
Even though the event may be over, you may now be experiencing or may experience later, some strong physical, psychological, and behavioral reactions to the traumatic event. No one is immune from these reactions. It is quite normal for people to experience these "aftershocks" when they have passed through a horrible incident. Seeking help does not imply weakness; it simply indicates that the traumatic event was just too powerful and overwhelming.
Critical incident stress management (CISM) is an adaptive, short-term psychological helping-process that focuses solely on an immediate and identifiable problem. It can include pre-incident preparedness to acute crisis management to post-crisis follow-up. A critical incident is any event that has a stressful impact sufficient to overwhelm the usually effective coping skills of either an individual or a group. Critical incidents are typically sudden, powerful events outside the range of ordinary human experiences that affect emergency workers and the public. Some examples are death or serious injury to a child, a fellow emergency worker, a suicide, an accident victim, or circumstances involving cumulative stress or extraordinary rescue or recovery operations.
CISM may be in the form of confidential one-on-one interactions, small group meetings or large group meetings and Pre-Crisis Education. Assistance may be offered in different forms: some examples include in person, phone through a non-recorded warm-line (a peer who provides a listening ear, offers compassionate presence and guides emergency service workers through the traumatic event), and/or online conference calls.
If we can be of assistance, reach us by calling the Office of Emergency Services at (716)753-4341 and you will be transferred to a team member.