Insights Into the Concept of Stress

Emergency response personnel are unique in that they dedicate their time and energy in assisting persons during stressful times of their lives, for example, after disasters such as hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, etc. The repeated exposure does have a potentially deleterious effect on their psychological well-being, what can greatly affect the overall outcome of such situations, including the prognosis of the primary victims of the event.

The Stress Management in Disasters in the Caribbean (SMID) Program, designed to prevent and to mitigate the psychological dysfunction which exposure to traumatic situations like disasters may cause in emergency response personnel, is based on the princi-ples of crisis intervention and critical incident stress management and it is not intended to take the place of professional therapy. Instead, it seeks to provide persons with the knowledge and skills to better understand, recognize and manage their emotional responses to traumatic situations.

This workbook, Insights into the Concept of Stress, and the companion workbook, Stress Management in Disasters, were designed to provide the basic training material for persons who will be providing such a service.