Page 15 - Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilience

xiv Introduction

transformation, addressing previously overlooked problems, seeking
wherever possible to improve conditions. Prevention of adverse events
and downward-spiraling consequences, for individuals and for society, is
most desirable and effective. Yet tragically, often people, and the systems
in which we live (workplace, governmental bodies, religious institutions,
healthcare institutions, communities, families), are only willing to expend
energy and resources when disaster looms and a sense of immediacy cre-
ates a heightened sense of necessity. In short, intervention happens only at
the point when it is too late for prevention and mitigation.

Origins: Healers Partnering to Seek Resilience

The origins of this undertaking are from a January 2004 meeting between
Dr. Craig Katz and Anastasia Holmes of Disaster Psychiatry Outreach
(DPO) and Daniel H. Bush and Peter Gudaitis of New York Disaster
Interfaith Services (NYDIS). In that meeting, DPO was asked if they
would be willing to form a partnership with chaplains and other clergy
members engaged in 9/11 relief and recovery operations. Though slightly
reluctant, they signaled their willingness to explore what such a partner-
ship might look like. They assigned Dr. Grant Brenner as the contact per-
son for the as-yet-to-be-defined project. Other meetings were taking place
and had previously happened without sparking ongoing work, but few
concrete ongoing collaborative partnerships emerged, partially because
funding streams for integrated mental health services and spiritual care
services are almost always separated. Mental health programs often appeal
to faith-based institutions for funding but rarely with the idea of actively
collaborating with clergy in providing services.
The overture from the faith-based organization, NYDIS, to mental
health-based, DPO, was made intentionally, with the knowledge that get-
ting psychiatrists to work with clergy would be an unprecedented coup
in the field of disaster relief work, with the awareness that there are often
substantial differences between mental health providers and clergy in
terms of religious belief.
The experience of serving in New York hospitals and the federal prison
in Lower Manhattan taught Chaplain Bush that some of the most strained
professional relationships were those between chaplains and psychiatrists.
Each discipline viewed the other warily, often as a competitor, even if a
lack of interdisciplinary partnering ill-served those most in need of both
mental health and pastoral care services. Disaster victims are in an even