Bringing Balance Back: The Power of Crisis Stabilization to Reduce Trauma and Stress

RECLAIM THE PRESENT

Jay from the Reclaim Team has an eye opening and candid conversation with Amie Leigh, Founder and Clinical Director of Capacity Path, and Emergency Mental Health Response organization. Her depth of knowledge and first hand experience working 19+ disasters ranging from shootings, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, etc. brings to the forefront a well-honed expertise in working with people and communities in catastrophic crisis. Amie utilizes in her stealth mental health field craft to construct models and systems to de-escalate and support in novel ways that make a real impact, changing the way we look at the current mental health crisis. Amie asserts an approach to responder mental health, and disaster behavioral health that goes beyond “trauma-informed” to essentially being “crisis-informed”, understanding that crisis is not yet trauma, and perhaps, never has to be. Crisis Informed care - and crisis stabilization specifically- can serve as missing link of preventative measures to reduce PTS/PTSD in responder professions and disaster impacted regions.

We discuss a really interesting and compelling wide array of practical approaches to navigate high-stress crisis scenarios and professions, considering these techniques and exercises that can increase ones window of tolerance and build resilience. We explore several programs she has authored and coauthored (Crisis Stabilization and Safety - CSS, Basic Crisis Stabilization - BCS, and Working with Trauma in Disasters - WWT) that explore crisis stabilization techniques and crisis psychosocial education as a means to get. These structural shifts in how we think about mental health in-the-field offers a solid footing and secure stance to endure the changing pressures.

Capacity Path has provided mental health support, crisis intervention, psychosocial support, and resiliency programs to 1000s of people and agencies in the US and internationally, from disaster case managers to first responders, including public safety and public health, to working with individual survivors and other community leaders such as pastors and teachers. Most recently, Capacity Path developed a critical response crisis stabilization team that was utilized as the state of Florida’s first ever SERT (State Emergency Response Team) for Mental Health and Wellness after the worst hurricane in terms of loss of life in Florida’s history for the past century. . Creating a Wellness field unit that served First Responders and Residents, more than 75 counselors provided 8337 Crisis Stabilization support sessions in the first few months after the storm, building a structure than can be duplicated anywhere that the damage is this significant, and the mental health issues looming. By partnering with Emergency Management, from local to federal, and collaborating with disaster VOADs (Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters), Capacity Path’s model builds new structures that engage local providers to reset and restore wellbeing in an otherwise very upside-down and disoriented instance of distress.