Page 8 - Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilience

Preface

Disaster defies definition, but not practical understanding. On my 35-year
watch in the field of disaster human services, formal practices for reducing
disaster’s anguish have grown dramatically, including the fields of disaster
spiritual care and disaster mental health. The essence of this work is pres-
ence, compassion and technique. The first two are constant. It is technique
that evolves. The key to future success will be growing our ability to work
in dynamic partnership, not only between the disciplines of spiritual care
and mental health but among all the pillars of the house called disaster
human services.
The mind and spirit are inseparable. And health, nutrition, family,
domicile, work, and community are essential. That is why this book is
for all disaster human services practitioners—not only spiritual caregiv-
ers and mental health professionals. None is fully ready to serve without a
strong understanding of all other sources of disaster help.
There is no disaster without loss, suffering, confusion, and distress.
Disaster disrupts person, family, home, and neighborhood. Disaster dam-
ages community. Never in their lives do people need skilled comforting
and guidance more than after a disaster.
You who deliver spiritual care and mental health services succeed by
bringing emotional and spiritual support and then by removing measures
of pain from each person’s disaster experience. You do this not only with
courage and commitment but also with a surprisingly complex and grow-
ing array of learned skills and knowledge.
Kai T. Erikson, a sociologist, put disaster mental health into the
national discourse with his landmark 1976 book, Everything in Its Path:
Destruction of Community in the Buffalo Creek Flood. The searing emo-
tional and spiritual anguish he related, largely through the words of the
victims, launched a broad-based search for more effective response. We
are still on that quest, and this book brings us forward.

vii