RT Article
T1 Psychological First Aid and the Role of Scientific Evidence in Christians' Provision of Disaster Spiritual and Emotional Care
JF Journal of psychology and christianity
VO 37
IS 1
SP 74
OP 79
A1 Schruba, Alice N.
A1 Davis, Edward B.
A1 Aten, Jamie D.
A1 Wang, David C.
A1 Entwistle, David N.
A1 Boan, David
LA English
YR 2018
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/157729436X
AB After a disaster, Christians and Christian humanitarian aid organizations are usually there to respond and offer assistance. Yet, sometimes Christians offer disaster spiritual and emotional care with little awareness of what scientific evidence indicates is and is not effective. The purpose of this article is to help address this need by offering an overview of Psychological First Aid (PFA; APA, 1954; Brymer et al., 2006a), which is currently considered the most evidence-informed approach for providing early psychosocial help to disaster survivors. We begin by giving a historical and empirical overview of PFA and another widely used intervention - Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD; Mitchell, 1983). We proceed to discuss implications for Christians who provide disaster spiritual and emotional care. Our main take-away message is that scientific evidence needs to play a key role in informing Christians' provision of disaster spiritual and emotional care. In particular, Christians would benefit from receiving training in PFA and incorporating it into their provision of disaster spiritual and emotional care.
K1 Disaster relief
K1 EMERGENCY management
K1 Humanitarian assistance
K1 INTERNATIONAL relief
K1 Mental Health