Impact of mental health emergency preparedness training for public health professionals

PURPOSE: Coordinating and integrating mental health topics into emergency preparedness planning is a critical step for ensuring effective psychological first aid. In order to remedy the current lack of integration, potential first responders must receive effective mental health preparedness training. The current study sought to address this need by providing mental health preparedness training to public health and allied health professionals in Kansas and assessing training impact on mental health preparedness level. METHODS: Participants included 155 potential first responders from public health and allied fields, all of whom attended one of 10 training presentations on mental health emergency preparedness. Pre and post each presentation, participants responded to six Likert-type questions about their knowledge of topics and level of mental health preparedness. Questions addressed stress reactions of specific populations, common psychological responses to disaster, psychological resiliency, mental health/preparedness integration, and level of agency preparedness. RESULTS: Post training, participants demonstrated statistically significant (p < .001) improvements in all questions about knowledge of mental health preparedness. Participants were also significantly more likely (p < .001) to report that their agency could respond to the mental health issues related to a disaster or emergency. CONCLUSIONS: The current study provides data about the present gaps in practitioner knowledge regarding mental health preparedness in Kansas, as well as the ability of potential first responders to internalize mental health preparedness information quickly. These findings are the first step toward producing and implementing effective mental health preparedness information and training on a wide scale.