Peer
Peer s ( English : passu) after are Critical Incident Stress Management trained by Jeffrey T. Mitchell people in emergency services , the emergency services help psychologically stressful operations and the stress more manageable and the risk of disease in consequence PTSD to decrease.
history
A peer always has appropriate operational experience and, thanks to this same basis, better access to the colleagues concerned. An external therapist or psychologist cannot be a peer, but acts as a Mental Health Professional (MHP). In stress debriefings, the peer only has a supporting function for the MHP due to his level of training. In emergency medical services , THW and rescue dog teams , fire brigades and relief organizations there are peers since the beginning of 1980 years in the armed forces since the 1990s. Until then, only the emergency pastoral care had given those affected psychological support in the event of serious incidents. Training as a peer helps emergency workers to process negative events more rationally than “laypeople”.
Potentially traumatizing situations at work
A potentially traumatizing event is characterized by a vital discrepancy experience between threatening situational factors and the individual coping options, which is accompanied by feelings of helplessness and defenseless abandonment and thus causes a permanent shock to self-understanding and the world.
Exemplary experiences of this kind can be:
- mutilated, burned or dying people,
- unsuccessful resuscitation of children and adults, sudden infant death syndrome ,
- Victims of senseless violence and the consequences of crime ,
- Mass accidents
- Suicides ,
- the fact that the aid comes too late despite all efforts,
- Risk to your own health
Rescue workers are more often confronted with such situations in their professional life, which means that the later occurrence of PTSD or burnout syndrome (mental and physical permanent exhaustion) is greater in them than in other professions.
Help teams for helpers
So-called psychosocial support teams (PSU; synonymous also CISM teams = Critical Incident Stress Management , OPEN teams, SbE teams, in Austria SvB team ) are used to “help the helpers” .
All of these “help teams” consist of peers who have also been trained in CISM and organized “psychosocial specialists”. As psychosocial professionals are often clerics , as well as doctors used, with at least one additional training as a firefighter or the like. Peers are employees of the above-mentioned emergency organizations who, in addition to personal suitability, have a lot of experience in their field.
Development in Germany
In Germany, following a development in 2003 and 2004, the PSU teams are now uniformly trained and coordinated via the working group of heads of professional fire departments . Every “organization” can request PSU teams. The Bundeswehr has also been successfully training peers for years.
PSU teams in Germany
A normal debriefing of a psychologically stressful assignment often helps to process what has happened. The peers are the first point of contact on site. In further steps, if necessary, additional “meetings” can be arranged together with a PSU team (depending on the size of the group, 1-2 psychosocial experts and 2-6 peers). In Germany, the PSU teams consist of “psychosocial specialists” such as doctors, pastors, social workers and peers from various organizations. In the best case, peers from the DRK (or other aid organizations), fire brigade, THW, rescue service, rescue dog teams , hospitals, police, etc. are in a team. Depending on the “requesting unit” and the “stressful type of operation”, the “emergency teams” should achieve an optimum of “proximity to the helper”.
Bundeswehr stress concept
In the Bundeswehr, according to the CISM according to Jeffrey T. Mitchell, selected soldiers who are at least corporal and, if possible, have operational experience, are trained as peers. You support the psychologist or doctor in carrying out stress debriefings and can independently defuse or individual crisis interventions with a stabilizing character, e.g. B. perform in mass damage incidents. In the medical-psychological stress concept of the Bundeswehr, peers are listed as possible members of crisis intervention teams (KIT).
Situation in Austria
The peers mostly belong to their own organization and practice their psychological knowledge in their profession. In emergency situations, they are mostly voluntary (as peers in the fire brigade: fellow firefighters; in the case of the emergency services, voluntary helpers in the respective organization, etc .; they are by definition (see above) insiders ). As priests are also members of many volunteer fire brigades , they carry out their work as fire brigade curates. This facility has existed with the Austrian fire brigades since 2000. In Lower Austria alone, the fire brigade pears are used on average 50 times a year. 42 peers are available for this.
Status
Psychosocial support is not psychotherapy , it is part of the "preventive measures". If it turns out in "debriefings" that a (possible) psychotrauma has already occurred, the PSU teams will provide professional help. All information on "organizational forms" is based on the German system, in German-speaking countries the PSU system can be structured differently.
See also
- Psychosocial support
- Crisis intervention in the rescue service
- Handling stress after stressful events
literature
- George S. Everly, Jeffrey T. Mitchell: CISM - Stress Management After Critical Events - A New Standard of Care for Emergencies, Crises and Disasters. Facultas-Univ.-Verl., Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-85076-560-1
- Jeffrey T. Mitchell, George S. Everly, Joachim Müller-Lange: Handbuch Einsatznachsorge. Stumpf & Kossendey, Edewecht 2005, ISBN 3-932750-91-8
Web links
- Mission report from a peer
- Interview with a peer-trained soldier
- Project PEERs at the German Air Rescue
- What happens if the helper needs help himself? Information lecture Bavarian Red Cross (pdf; 605 kB), read on January 16, 2011
- SvB teams in the DA-CH area on the side of the Tyrolean Red Cross
Individual evidence
- ↑ Website of the Austrian Red Cross: A worldwide network. ( Memento of the original from April 8, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Read January 16, 2011
- ↑ Fischer & Riedesser (2009): Textbook of Psychotraumatology. Ernst Reinhardt, Munich. P. 84
- ↑ Medical-psychological stress concept of the Bundeswehr (pdf) ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , read January 13, 2011
- ↑ BrandAus 4/2011 page 32 f.
