December 2012

1. Welcome
2. Psychologist volunteers needed to run support groups after disasters – are you interested? 
3. New Australian Red Cross and Australian Psychological Society booklet on psychological preparedness
4. Teacher Training resources for working with children following a disaster – new link to Japanese translations of teacher training resources
5. PhD Scholarship in trauma recovery in Melbourne
6. Victorian disaster workforce survey report
7. Disasters - communicating in the crisis and aftermath.  PCST- SCANZ Symposium 21-23 February 2013, Christchurch, New Zealand
8. Special Issue on Child Abuse by the Australian Child and Adolescent Trauma, Loss and Grief Network (ACATLGN)
9. ACPMH annual literature summary
10. Contact us

Welcome

Dear Sir/Madam,

Welcome to the new members who have joined the APS Disaster Response Network over the past months.  This newsletter comes out about 3 times a year, to keep in touch with members and share news and resources. 

In this edition we are letting you know about an exciting new initiative we are planning with the Red Cross to train psychologists to run grief support groups for people affected by disaster. 

You will also find links to practical resources for disaster preparedness and teacher training, useful compilations of articles, and a notification of a PhD scholarship in trauma recovery in Melbourne. 

Dr Susie Burke
Public Interest, Environment and Disaster Response

Psychologist volunteers needed to run support groups after disasters – are you interested? 

The Australian Psychological Society, together with Dr Rob Gordon and the Australian Red Cross, are trialling a new project to provide facilitated support groups for people affected by disasters, led by trained psychologists or other experienced group work practitioners. The complex and varied impacts of disasters often result in feelings of isolation and difficulty communicating with those whose impacts are different and with friends and relatives who are not impacted.  Opportunities to meet with others in similar situations in a safe setting provide an invaluable aid to emotional resilience.  Experience from Black Saturday has shown the value of such facilitated support groups.  Ideally, support groups would be offered to affected people within 4 to 6 weeks of the disaster to provide communication, sharing of experiences, exchange of information and help with coping. Support groups are likely to run once a month for at least a year following a disaster event. 

Our plan is to develop a network of ready-trained support group facilitators who would then be prepared and ready to respond if and when a disaster happens.  A prepared network should enable support groups for affected people to be established in a much shorter time frame following a disaster event than is possible when needing to recruit and train facilitators following an event.  Once trained, facilitators will be placed on a database and may be contacted to run a grief support group following a disaster like a bushfire. 

Volunteers wanted

We are currently seeking psychologists who are interested in training to become one of these ready-trained support group facilitators. We are looking for people with experience in running groups, who also have experience in disaster recovery or other areas of traumatic stress or grief.  Since the support groups are an intervention targeted at psychological recovery, it is important that facilitators are able to discuss, and answer questions about, mental health issues in a credible and authoritative manner.

At this stage we are seeking psychologists who would be willing to volunteer their time to run once-monthly support group of 1 to 1.5 hours as part of the Red Cross Psychosocial Recovery programs (although we hope to be able to get funding to be able to pay for this service in the future).  Support groups would be conducted in the community affected which is likely to involve travel to rural communities.

Our first training workshop will take place on Wednesday February20th, 2013, from 2pm to 5pm in Melbourne.  If you are interested, or want more information, please contact Susie Burke at s.burke@psychology.org.au.

New Australian Red Cross and Australian Psychological Society booklet on psychological preparedness

The Australian Red Cross in collaboration with the Australian Psychological Society has prepared a booklet on Psychological Preparedness for disasters.  This booklet includes many of the strategies already included in the APS series on psychological preparedness, like preparing yourself for how you might feel, think and react in an emergency, and learning strategies for reducing anxiety and managing strong feelings.  The guide can be downloaded from: http://www.redcross.org.au/files/RED_Prep_Psyc_Booklet_F.pdf

Teacher Training resources for working with children following a disaster

Last edition we let members know about some useful resources developed by Professor Justin Kenardy and colleagues at the University of Queensland Schools of Medicine and Psychology.  Their teacher training resources were designed to assist teachers to promote recovery in children following disaster or trauma, and to identify if and when a child might need additional assistance.  These resources were also made available in Japanese. 

UQ has now upgraded their website to include Japanese language instructions regarding the teacher materials, and have provided us with a direct link:   http://www.som.uq.edu.au/childtrauma/post-disaster-resources/自然災害を体験した子どもの反応-(japanese-teacher-resources).aspx 

PhD Scholarship in trauma recovery in Melbourne

Applications are currently open for PhD scholarships in trauma recovery based at the Monash Injury Research Institute in Melbourne.  They have a 3-year full-time scholarship available for a PhD student interested in the area of traumatic stress.  Students with first class Honours in Psychology, Statistics, Medicine or related fields are very welcome to apply.  If interested, contact Eva Alisic (firstname.lastname@monash.edu) to discuss.  The starting date is early 2013.  http://trauma-recovery.net/phd-research/phd-scholarship/

Final report on the Victorian Disaster Mental Health Workforce Capacity Survey

Victorian DRN members were invited earlier in the year to take part in a Victorian Disaster Mental Health Workforce Capacity Survey.  This project was conducted by the University of Melbourne with wide-ranging stakeholder support in order to examine the current state (i.e., the nature, scope, profile and capacity) of the disaster mental health workforce in Victoria.  They have recently published their final report, with the following findings.

“The current report indicates that the Victorian disaster mental health workforce is multifaceted, comparatively mature aged, largely female, tertiary qualified, professionally organised and mainly operating in direct service delivery roles across varied settings. Study findings demonstrate that this workforce has an encouraging level of understanding of disaster aspects, a high  level of interest but variable levels of training, experience, confidence and capacity to provide best-practice disaster mental health interventions. While Metropolitan regions had the greatest number of disaster mental health providers, key indicators of disaster mental health capacity varied between Victorian regions and across provider groups. Key findings of the study including existing workforce strengths and strategic development requirements give rise to a number of recommendations which can inform a more strategic approach to disaster mental health workforce planning and sustainable capacity building in the future.

Please feel free to distribute the report to relevant parties with an interest in the area. The report can also be downloaded from: http://healthprograms.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/652662/Vic_DMH_Workforce_Capacity_Survey_-_Project_Report_October_2012.pdf

Disasters - communicating in the crisis and aftermath.  PCST- SCANZ Symposium 21-23 February 2013, Christchurch, New Zealand

Registrations are now open for the 21-23 February 2013 International Symposium which the Global Science Communication Network PCST and the Science Communicators Association of New Zealand are co-hosting in Christchurch.

This international event will coincide with the second anniversary of the major earthquake that struck Christchurch on 22 February 2010. The city and region are proceeding toward recovery at full pace and a superb high quality of international and NZ speakers has been assembled.

The Symposium 2013 is entitled: 'Disasters - communicating in the crisis and aftermath'.  It will build on the growing body of research that has taken place in the wake of the Christchurch earthquakes and look at disaster planning, communication and resilience issues both in New Zealand and around the world.

The speaking line-up includes Massimiano Bucchi (Università di Trento), Satoko Oki (Tokyo University), Ren Fujun (China Research Institute for Science Popularization - CRISP), Giuseppe Pellegrini (Observa Science in Society), Li Xiuju (CRISP), Mark Quigley (University of Canterbury) and NZ's leading political commentator Colin James.

To view programme information and register, please visit:
http://www.scanz.co.nz/index.html

Special Issue on Child Abuse by the Australian Child and Adolescent Trauma, Loss and Grief Network (ACATLGN)

ACATLGN’s November edition of their newsletter is a special issue on child abuse, following the current government focus on child abuse, particularly sexual abuse is long overdue. 

‘Child abuse is one of the most profound traumatic experience to which children are exposed. There is clear scientific evidence that sexual abuse, physical abuse and neglect are causally associated with mental health problems in childhood, adolescence, adult life and even old age. Physical health may be adversely affected throughout the life span. Suicide risk is also heightened. Sexual abuse has the most severe effects through its physical violation of the child, along with the secrecy, betrayal and threat that accompanies this. And for all who have grown from childhood to adult life, with the loss of trust and security of their world, with their pain carried as a burden of guilt, shame and uncertainty, we can share great sadness, hurt and anger about what has happened, and what has been denied’.  Beverley Raphael.

To read more, or to subscribe, go to http://www.earlytraumagrief.anu.edu.au/

ACPMH Annual Literature Summary 2011

The Australian Centre for Post Traumatic Mental Health have just put out their Annual Literature Summary of important research articles from 2011 in the field of trauma, PTSD and military and veteran mental health.  This year, they have also prepared an Integrated Literature Review 2002-2012, an investigation of three key areas: DSM-5 criteria changes; e-health interventions; and the longitudinal course of PTSD symptoms.

Contact us

If you have feedback on DRN News, or useful information or suggestions that you would like us to include in DRN News, please contact us at drn@psychology.org.au.

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