Building Resilience in Workers and Communities

Following disasters, response workers are often found to present with higher rates of mental ill-health than the general population.  Research has shown that mental health  (also called Behavioral health) is positively impacted by various support systems, interventions and self-care activities, particularly in workers. Often disasters disrupt support systems and post-event training is difficult to arrange.

The NIEHS WETP program has developed the Gulf Responder Resilience Training project, which focuses on training possible response workers (often from medically underserved communities) in mental health and self-care to promote resilience. This pre-disaster training is intended to build skills and knowledge of mental health symptoms, and resources available in any community for both workers and supervisors. To address issues in medically-underserved communities, particularly those which may lack a psychological health professional, WETP has created a training program for general medical providers, including nurses, that introduces basic mental health care, risk factors and interventions. 

Community stakeholder involvement has been critical to developing training that is relevant to underserved communities.  Balancing self-care with referral to advanced services that may not exist is a continuing challenge and communities are best poised to support WETP in determining this balance. The newly created training materials focused on workers in the Gulf Coast, taught by community organizations, will be a framework for discussions of strategies to best involve communities and in developing relevant mental health training.