Utilizing Preventive Mental Health Interventions: Psychological First Aid in Philadelphia Communities Affected by Violence

Exposure to persistent, ongoing community violence can significantly impact the behavioral health of individuals and communities. Mental health interventions such as Psychological First Aid (PFA) have been developed to ameliorate long term effects of disaster and/or traumatic events, including the potential development of anxiety disorders and post-traumatic stress. Large scale emergency response models deliver these preventive services, yet, small scale community events do not generate these emergency response services, despite the evidence that exposure to the traumatic stress of witnessing interpersonal violence has been linked to negative mental health outcomes. Over the past five years, we have worked with the Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health to develop the capacity of local community behavioral health providers to meet the need for local community response. The Community Response Teams (CRT) deliver preventive mental health interventions following small-scale, local traumatic events, such as shootings at community centers, but are cross-trained to respond to large scale dissaters. Unlike typical models that seek to address mental health issues as they present to clinical settings, the CRTs work to mitigate the onset of anxiety disorders by providing robust outreach to its communities. In addition, CRTs increase trauma informed care competency in community settings. Our evaluation of this program to date has focused o 1) local community awareness and utilization of the CRT services, 2) the effectiveness of the model in building capacity for responding to both local trauma and large scale emergencies, and 3) levels of participation in this preventative model by neighborhood behavioral health organizations.