Community trauma: A blueprint for support and treatment for trauma recovery network (TRN) responders from the Newtown, CT, tragedySummary Sheet:  Community trauma: A blueprint for support and treatment for trauma recovery network (TRN) responders from the Newtown, CT, tragedy (Luber)

A devastating fire in Stamford, Connecticut on Christmas morning 2011 shook our town and took the lives of three young children and their grandparents. We soon learned that the community had no organized mental health response in place to help the first responders after the rescue and recovery efforts. Because it was Christmas Day, agencies were not receiving or responding to emergency calls. Phone calls to some of our EMDR colleagues began to unfold, inviting us to be a presence at a debriefing at the firehouse that week. The fire department was devastated after this horrific fire, beginning with being woken up on Christmas morning to a call that involved children in harms’ way. This marked the beginning of the formation of our Stamford Trauma Recovery Network. Six of our EMDR colleagues treated some of the firemen pro bono as our newly formed team, coordinated by Michael Crouch, LCSW and myself, met to discuss mission, membership and structure. We collaborated with HAP for assistance in shaping goals and began to network with the local fire and police departments, offering them traumatology workshops and education about EMDR treatment. Placing mental health clinicians, including our own TRN members at the top of the list of our definition of “First Responders” was an outgrowth of my involvement in other HAP projects (Alter-Reid, K, Evans, S., & Schaefer, 2010). “Shared traumatic reality”(Baum, 2010) is essential to be prepared for, when training or working clinically, with first responder therapists in disaster areas. Therefore, our TRN included a chairperson for “Caring for Our Own Therapists”. [Excerpt]

Book Section

English

Karen Alter-Reid

Alter-Reid, K. (2014). Community trauma: A blueprint for support and treatment for trauma recovery network (TRN) responders from the Newtown, CT, tragedy. In M. Luber (Ed.), Implementing EMDR Early Mental Health Interventions for Man-Made and Natural Disasters: Models, Scripted Protocols, and Summary Sheets (pp. 495-505). New York, NY: Springer Publishing Co