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Normative and Diagnostic Reactions to Disaster 225

to achieve continuity through collaboration. This chapter provides you
with a model of how to create a continuum of care in response to disas-
ter through Clergy Outreach and Professional Engagement (COPE). The
context of persons’ meaning making is established before a disaster and
for most persons is connected to a religious community. After a disaster,
most persons seek sufficient and appropriate support directly from their
communities without need for clinical intervention.
The goal of disaster relief is community restoration. Emergency respond-
ers will be most effective if they collaborate with clergy to learn the commu-
nity context to which persons can be restored. Clergy can be the clinicians’
guides to the cultures of the communities that these responders seek to
assist. With collaboration, COPE can offer seamless and sensitive ser-
vice delivery for disaster relief mental health care. COPE’s organic design
encourages early identification of clinical need, smoothes the clinical refer-
ral process, and acknowledges the importance of relapse prevention. COPE
supports clergy when congregants need clinical care, and encourages clini-
cians to seek clergy expertise when theological and existential questions
are asked by patients in clinical care. Successful collaboration will culmi-
nate in community restoration and a return to generativity.

Further Readings

American Public Health Association. (1946). Can the clergy aid the health offi-
cer in the upbuilding of mental health? American Journal of Public Health,
36(11), 1313–1314.
Budd, F. C. (1999). An Air Force model of psychologist-chaplain collaboration.
Professional Psychology: Research & Practice, 30(6), 552–556.
Corrigan, P. W. (2005). On the stigma of mental illness: Practical strategies for
research and social change (p. 343). Washington, DC: American Psychological
Association.
Department of Defense Task Force on Mental Health. (2007). An achievable vision:
Report of the Department of Defense Task Force on Mental Health. Falls
Church, VA: Defense Health Board.
Erikson, E. H., & Erikson, J. M. (1997). The life cycle completed (Extended / ed.).
New York: W.W. Norton.
Gordon, R., Steinberg, J. A., & Silverman, M. M. (1987). An operational classifica-
tion of disease prevention. In Preventing mental disorders: A research perspec-
tive (pp. 20–26). Rockville, MD: National Institute of Mental Health.
Hinshaw, S. P. (2007). The mark of shame: Stigma of mental illness and an agenda
for change. New York: Oxford University Press.