Tribal team trained for crisis intervention

Sarah Cummins

9/27/2001 12:00:00 AM

Saginaw Chippewa community members and employees recently participated in a training program to help peers cope with traumatic events.

"We try to de-escalate people's thoughts and feelings, so that they can get back to normal functioning," explained Hunter Genia, Mental Health clinical director. Genia attended the Aug. 20 to 21 training that took place in the Saginaw Chippewa Public Safety Building.

"We're trying to get individuals or people to talk about where they were when they first heard about the traumatic event and what they first thought," explained Genia. "If you're familiar with Native culture, it's kind of like a big talking circle."

Representatives from the Isabella County Crisis Response Team trained individuals from the Tribal community to respond to critical incidents. Participants from the community include members of the Behavioral Health Programs staff, Soaring Eagle Casino & Resort Security, Nimkee Memorial Wellness Center and Public Safety.

"The team's purpose is to offer crisis response debriefing to community members after experiencing traumatic events," explained facilitator Kathe Martin, Nimkee Memorial Wellness Center Maternal-Child Health Services coordinator.

The Isabella Crisis Response Team was organized in 1989 in order to help the community respond quickly to traumatic events.

"Like individuals, whole communities suffer trauma in the aftermath of disasters and especially gruesome crimes," according to information from the team. "The community may experience a sort of paralysis immediately following the incident. Almost everyone is in shock, yet each, directly or indirectly affected, soon begins to react, often with very intense emotions and not necessarily in the best way."

Martin said the crisis response team wanted to involve Tribal community members, so that people could receive help from someone they are familiar with.

"One of the reasons we wanted to have a number of people who are Tribally affiliated is because people are more likely to participate if the recognize people," said Martin. She explained that this works well for first responders as well.

"It helps to have like debriefing like," she said. "It helps to have police officers debrief police officers and firefighters debrief firefighters because there's a certain camaraderie with first response people, so it helps to have somebody from their ranks."

Certain emergencies cause unusual stress for not only community members but also for the emergency responders. Originally, crisis response teams were formed to assist firefighters, police officers, emergency medical technicians, dispatchers, emergency room workers and other first responders in dealing with critical incidents.

The crisis response team uses the Jeffrey Mitchell Model. Mitchell is a former paramedic who returned to school to earn a doctorate in psychology. He now heads the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation in Ellicott City, Md.

Even trained first response people feel an impact when encountering particularly gory incidents or a victim they knew, according to Mitchell.

"These are normal people who have normal reactions to totally abnormal events," Mitchell explained to Dail Willis of the Associated Press.

These incidents were originally limited to mass casualty events such as fires, natural disasters or plane crashes and the emergency workers who would interact directly with victims and may become injured themselves. Now, however, a crisis response team may respond to a serious injury or death of a community member, mass casualty events, suicide, death of a child, violence to a child and incidents that attract unusual or critical media coverage. They may go into the local schools and talk to students and teachers or coworkers.

After traumatic events people may experience stress reactions a few hours or sometimes even months later. Commons stress reactions affect people physically, mentally and emotionally and may include, nausea, tremors, dizziness, chills, diarrhea, rapid heartbeat, headaches, slowed thinking, difficulty making decisions, distressing dreams, memory problems, fear, anxiety, guilt, sadness, anger, feeling numb or irritability to name a few.

For more information, call (989) 772-5938 or after hours (989) 772-2918.