Page 251 - Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilience

220 Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilence

strikes. This chapter will describe a model of coprofessional collaboration
between clergy and clinicians that facilitates expert dialogue, which then
helps persons to recover from trauma and ease community restoration.

Background

For the past 16 years, we have examined the roles of clergy as de facto men-
tal health care providers, and the interactions between clergy and mental
health professionals, in providing care for persons with emotional needs.
One of our surprising findings was that while a majority of clergy was
willing to work with clinicians to help with mental health problems, fewer
clinicians recognized a role for collaboration with clergy. Rather, clinicians
saw clergy as one-way referral sources. In the context of disaster, clergy
tend to be viewed as leaders of commemorative rituals, as well as assets to
provide infrastructure for distributing basic needs (e.g., food, clean water,
and information dissemination). These actions are seen as distinct from
clinical care. This is an illogical stance as treatment must follow diagnosis.
Diagnosis begins with the recognition that a person demonstrates change
from some baseline behavior. We do not grow up under clinical care. We
grow up in communities. We raise ourselves and our children in com-
munities. This community context is our baseline. It is to this context that
we wish to be restored. When community clergy are full members of the
disaster response team from its inception, they can provide information
to help determine if individuals’ emotional well-being has changed from
their normative baseline. This information will be both biographical and
cultural.
Therefore, we emphasize both the complementarity, as well as the con-
tinuity, of the distinct functions of clinicians and clergy in response to
disaster. Clinicians provide professional treatment to relieve individuals
of their pain and suffering and move them from dysfunction to their high-
est level of functioning. In most cases, assuming resources are available,
the less clinicians are seeing those under their care, the more successful
the clinicians are. With some serious cases of posttraumatic stress disor-
der (PTSD), clinical relationships—although they will wax and wane—
can last for many years.
Unlike clinicians, clergy expect and hope to see their congregants as
often as possible through the course of their lives. Through their relation-
ships with congregants, clergy acquire comprehensive information, which
(with consent) they could share with clinicians. The clergy’s personal