Critical Incident Debriefing
Catastrophes, whether by forces of nature (e.g., earthquakes) or man-made (e.g., shootings at a school or at the work place, war zones) result in devastating psychological trauma, in addition to any physical trauma. By definition, disasters impact more than just one or two people. An individual can either be a direct survivor of the event, or a witness to it, to suffer the impact of the experience. Often, affected individuals are only loosely connected by geographic area or random experience (for example, a bank armed robbery).