Emotional and Spiritual Care in Disasters

This advanced-level course will enhance your skills to provide effective emotional and spiritual care (ESC) to meet the disaster-related needs of disaster responders and disaster-affected families and individuals within disaster operations. This course builds on the crisis intervention principles taught in the Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) core courses to effectively integrate these principles within ESC teams for appropriate care throughout the disaster continuum from the immediate to the long-term recovery process.

This course is designed for trained clergy, chaplains, mental health professionals, and CISM-trained crisis responders who desire to enhance their skills in providing Emotional and Spiritual Care to survivors of disaster and trauma.

Suggested but not mandatory prerequisites: Individual Crisis Intervention & Peer Support; Group Crisis Intervention; Pastoral Crisis Intervention.

Course Highlights

One’s own faith tradition and ESC
ESC & the Incident Command System
ESC & disaster relief operations
The physical, psychological, and emotional impact of disasters
The behavioral, interpersonal, and spiritual impact of disasters
Range of ESC interventions in the aftermath
Suitability to provide ESC
Maintaining health during deployment
Deployment of personal care plans
Intervention and caregiving concepts