Following shootings, free trainings focus on a vital type of first aid anyone can do 

You may not have heard the term before, but if you’ve ever checked in with someone after a traumatic event, you’ve provided a part of “psychological first aid.”

M Health Fairview presented a two-hour training session on Sept. 9 for teachers, youth leaders and community members to learn ways to support people affected by traumatic stress. The event was in response to the Aug. 27 shooting at Annunciation Catholic School and Church, in which two children were killed, and 21 others, including three adults, were injured. 

Psychological first aid was conceptualized after 9/11 as a community intervention tool following traumatic events. Though regular stress is a part of everyday life, traumatic stress comes from facing or witnessing a situation where your own or another person’s life or well-being is threatened. 

Minnesota’s own model for psychological first aid was launched in 2005 by the Minnesota Department of Health in response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, said Christina McCoy, manager of community health equity initiatives at M Health Fairview and one of the leaders of Tuesday’s training at the Fairview Community Health and Wellness Hub in St. Paul. 

“Everybody in the room had already applied psychological first aid but just didn’t call it that,” McCoy said of the participants, some of whom worked with children and survivors of domestic violence. “Putting a name to it, I think, gives it power.”

Related: Sandy Hook parents offer community support, policy advice after Annunciation shooting

There are five steps to providing psychological first aid. The first is to focus on immediate safety – meeting someone’s basic needs with immediate resources. The next step is to comfort the person without asking for too many details. Then, focus on connection – specifically, connecting the person to community members and organizations that can help. 

Throughout all steps, culture should be considered. For example, it may not be culturally appropriate to touch someone to provide comfort, or it may be disrespectful to refer to an older person by their given name. To make sure psychological first aid is culturally responsive, said McCoy, Fairview trains members and community leaders of various cultures to provide this assistance to their peers. 

A fourth step is to provide the person with self-empowerment by helping them determine what is in their control and to plan for what comes next. Lastly, psychological first aid includes promoting hope while still validating feelings of pain and hopelessness in the moment. 

“Any adult can sign up and take this training,” said Emily Carpenter, Fairview’s community partnerships manager. Fairview offers a one-hour training for teenagers to provide aid to their peers, as well as trainings in Spanish and Somali. Self-guided training is also available via downloadable apps, including ones from the University of Minnesota and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Both McCoy and Carpenter have seen how using the pillars of psychological first aid can benefit well-being. Before working at M Health Fairview, McCoy was a staff member at Brittany’s Place, a shelter in St. Paul for girls and young women who have been sexually trafficked and/or exploited. 

“Our girls were triggered very easily. They had just experienced traumas like you could not even imagine. Every day we would have what I would call an explosion,” McCoy said.

Staff members also experienced trauma, both from witnessing people being triggered and helping them after the incidents. Using the pillars of psychological first aid helped McCoy give staff members time to process their own trauma so “they could be in a position to come back and be healthy and be able to support the young women.”

Psychological first aid, while helpful, is not a replacement for care from a mental health provider. If someone is harming themselves or others, or has withdrawn to the point where they can’t care for themselves or their dependents, it is necessary to refer them to a mental health professional, Carpenter said. Even if someone can’t access mental health care afterward, due to finances or other reasons, psychological first aid still has long-term well-being benefits.

Related: How new funds could broaden the network of BIPOC mental health professionals

“As you work through the pillars, you work more towards that long-term (well-being),” said Carpenter. “You start with ‘What do you need right here and now?’ – safety, comfort, those connections, and then you move into that self-empowerment and hope. So even if there are barriers to access more of that specialty or necessary care beyond (psychological first ai), I think that this is already moving them into a better spot.” 

The intended outcome is to help someone move forward by increasing their resilience. What can also increase resilience, however, is the act of learning how to provide this first aid.

“We’re offering an opportunity for people to be proactive,” said McCoy, “to build up their own resilience and put them in a position where they feel like they can respond when the next tragedy happens in our community, because (with) the times we live in, it will happen. Being able to offer this really helps build that confidence.” 

Editor’s note: This article first appeared on MinnPost and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. It was written by Deanna Pistono, MinnPost’s race & health equity fellow.

MinnPost is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom dedicated to producing high-quality journalism for Minnesotans.