Page 10 - Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilience

Preface ix

When the World Trade Center was attacked on 9/11, psychiatrist Anthony
Ng was Medical Director for Disaster Psychiatry Outreach and Chair of New
York City’s Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (VOAD). A year or
so later, I asked him about his foremost lessons from this event.
His response was singularly clear. Tony said this: “Do NOT consider
yourself a disaster mental health professional until you can come to the
arena with a comprehensive understanding of all available disaster human
services, and the ability to effectively connect people to them.” This is our
challenge: To be fully equipped to comfort and assist.
There are numerous solutions to most of the causes of suffering and
distress in most disaster victims. While death, trauma, and total destruc-
tion cannot be undone, most needs are temporal and can be addressed.
We must have the training and real-time information necessary to con-
nect people to shelters, temporary housing, home repair, legal services,
family reunification, health services, child care, disaster unemployment
compensation, occupational equipment replacement, eviction prevention,
funeral assistance, consumer fraud protection, home debris removal, pet
care, mold prevention, and insurance guidance, to name but a few essen-
tial services in disaster relief and recovery.
To succeed, to be fully equipped, disaster mental health and spiritual
care practitioners will have to prepare to ensure that they will respond
in a coordinated context. Who will provide shelter information to chap-
lains? Who will give government assistance information to clergy? How
will mental health professionals know how to connect their clientele with
disaster legal services?
Unfortunately, there are no consistent answers. There are admirable
examples of very effective coordinative umbrellas that have come into
being after certain recent disasters but no guarantee of the presence of
interagency information exchange mechanisms in the future. It is simply
no organization’s funded mandate.
So, we are challenged to not only develop and refine the practices and
protocols of our respective disciplines, but, in order for each of our own
sectors to fully succeed, we must invent ways that we can become mutu-
ally aware and accessible across the many disciplines of disaster human
services. To be able to bring our best to future disaster victims, we must
become a functional interservice community.

Ken Curtin
U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Volunteer Liaison