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Emergency Mental Health After Traumatic Events

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Behavioral Medicine

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Abstract

This chapter presents one of the topics which involves behavioral medicine, clinical psychology, and psychiatry, namely, emergency mental health. The chapter also reveals the heavy psychological and societal price we pay when not performing evidence-based interventions. After presenting the chapter’s “case,” theoretical models, explaining responses to traumatic events, are presented. Risk factors for developing PTSD after traumatic events are described, based on scientific literature. I then review evidence concerning past interventions for preventing PTSD, with particular emphasis on the failure of debriefing. This is followed by a voyage into the neuropsychology of trauma leading to an alternative intervention, the memory structuring intervention (MSI), which is a neuroscience-based and evidence-based intervention. Additional methods in emergency mental health are mentioned, and the chapter ends by “treating” better our hypothetical case.

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  1. SCALab, University of Lille, Lille, France

    Yori Gidron

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Gidron, Y. (2019). Emergency Mental Health After Traumatic Events. In: Behavioral Medicine. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18893-1_10

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