Critical Incident Stress Management

Critical Incident Stress Management

The last two days, I was trained in Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM).  This is a program that provides psychological first aid to people who have experienced a critical incident.  A critical incident is a traumatic incident that causes high levels of stress in those exposed to that incident.  Examples of these are deaths, accidents, suicides, and other traumatic events.

I received instruction in group interventions, learning how to conduct large group Critical Stress Briefings, small group Critical Stress Briefings, de-fusings and de-briefings.  It is important to know that these are not psycho-therapy, nor are they meant to replace true mental health care. The purpose of CISM is to help those involved in critical incidents process what has happened, and get their lives back on track.  It also helps identify those who may need more professional care.

The instructor's name was Fuzzy Lake.  Yes, that's his real name.  He is a chaplain, a minister, and a CISM instructor.  He is as nice as he is knowledgeable.  He guided us through reams of information, as well as role-playing practice sessions until we felt like we could take our place on a debriefing team.  It was a pleasure and an honor to have him teach me.

My Vision

My vision is to have a county-wide school CISM team, in conjunction with the county's CISM team.  That way, when a critical incident happens in a school, there will be educators who can help other educators.

We educators do a good job watching out for our children, but we often do not do such a good job of taking care of ourselves.  Yet if we cannot take care of ourselves, who will be there to care for the children?  So if we want to take care of them, we have to also take care of us.

Thanks to Fuzzy, we can get started on that.