Crisis and Disaster Counselling: Lessons Learned from Hurricane Katrina and Other Disasters

Citation

Wilson, H.C. (2010), "Crisis and Disaster Counselling: Lessons Learned from Hurricane Katrina and Other Disasters", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 19 No. 1, pp. 143-143. https://doi.org/10.1108/dpm.2010.19.1.143.1

Disasters form part of human life; wherever people live there is the potential for disasters to occur independent of wealth, lifestyle, race or religion. What binds the survivors is the need for practical help to return their lives back to normality and one of the key issues surrounding this process is the need for effective and sympathetic counselling which allows the survivors to express their grief whether it be for lost loved ones or personal belongings or lifestyle.

This text adequately delivers a good practical resume of how this can and could be achieved. Drawing from the experience of responders to various catastrophes the subscribers of the various chapters have put together a text which addresses many of the issues that practitioners face in the aftermath of disastrous occurrences.

With chapters covering a wide range of topic areas from the sensitive issues surrounding ritual burial practices and the spiritual dimensions of caring for survivors; chapters dealing with dislocation and relocation and the effects that these have on the survivors, and in some cases the first responders, through to the role of local and national governments in the mental health response to such disasters, this text really does address those issues that can be quite often overlooked in the aftermath of a disaster.

The scope and presentation of the content of the book makes it an ideal text for those who are not familiar with the topic area but who have an interest in, or a need to know how to, extend the disaster response to include survivor and responder counselling to facilitate a guided response to disastrous occurrences.