Reference no: EM133192898
Assignment - Health & Medical Emergency Emotional Preparedness Discussion
Offer either a supporting or refuting argument to one of your classmate's discussions from last week. Conduct a search of materials on the internet to find your points of discussion. Use these in your discussion and cite correctly.
Please choose one of the following post and answer according to the above question: answer should contain 2 references
Post one - Psychiatrists believe that identifying people with functional needs, including those who have mental health issues and ensuring that their needs are met before, during, and after disasters are critical aspects of preparedness planning. Having developed preparedness plans and strategies for emotional and psychiatric patients is considered an ethical and legal aspect (Crane & Clements, 2016). If there is no such advanced planning to prepare this group of people for emergencies, they will likely be dramatically harmed by these incidents. Moreover, the psychiatric patients will likely not receive their necessary services and treatments during and after disasters due to the lack of preparedness planning that focusses on this group of people. It is thus crucial that emergency planners develop their preparedness planning for mental health patients to improve the effectiveness of service delivery, minimize adverse impacts, and maximize positive outcomes and objectives.
Furthermore, I believe that preparing such people with mental health issues for emergencies requires from responders to be more knowledgeable and experts in terms of psychological first aid since these affected people have more unique needs than the other generation. It is also crucial to highlight the critical need for such including psychological emergency preparedness plans and protocols to respond to psychiatric people and prepare them for emergencies effectively. Hence, it is recommended that organizations train their emergency managers and planners to be more knowledgeable in responding to psychiatric patients by taking such as the psychological first aid training courses. One such outstanding book that was published by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2011 to develop aid workers to be more prepared to respond to people with mental health issues during disasters. The title of the book is Psychological first aid: guide for field workers. It provides responders with a framework that highlights and explains how to support people who have been adversely impacted by disasters.
References - Crane, P. A., & Clements, P. T. (2016). Psychological response to disasters: Focus on adolescents. Journal of psychosocial nursing and mental health services, 43(8), 31-38.
World Health Organization. (2011). Psychological first aid: guide for field workers. World Health Organization.
Post two - For sure, dealing with mentally ill persons offers several challenges that can be social, emotional, or clinical. Necessarily, exceptional emergency preparedness needs for psychiatric and psychological patients is very significant since it makes it probable for the provision of adequate care to such patients. Therefore, healthcare providers should imperatively pay closer attention to determine whatever changes in a patient's mental state, recognize mental agitation triggers, and ensuring these patients are treated well (Harris et al., 2016). Consistent observation and insight on patients' emotions and behaviors are as well essential. Through observation, Emotional, and psychiatric patients' emotional requirements can't be addressed well. Overstaying in hospitals is, at times, scary and particularly in a circumstance that extensive treatment is needed.
Under such circumstances, emotional and psychiatric patients should be offered whatever support they might require. Likewise, it is essential to know that interpersonal skills and communication are vital when handling or dealing with mentally ill patients. Disaster preparedness for emotional and psychiatric patients needs extra attention to the needs and details that other people may not have to get worried about. Such patients have to strategize for environmental changes, medication management, notification of healthcare providers as well as a proper response to behavioral and emotional crises are problems that must be considered.
These patients can be helped through the creation of support systems that can be neighbors, family friends, or a trustworthy friend. Once they have identified the support system group, the patient is to make them aware so that they can always assist the mentally ill patients with their emotional reactions to the emergency circumstances.
In the case of disasters, particular emotions like agitation, fear, depression, and anxiety can heighten knowingly for mentally ill patients. Thus, the preparedness strategy should entail information on how the support system will benefit these patients in case emotional variations occur (McFarlane and Williams, 2012). In addition, psychiatric and psychological patients should be well conversant with their personal desires. This because they are aware of when they struggle most Iwith Nin messy circumstances as well as what can calm them down. So, such a piece of information should be shared with the individual around such patients.
It's as well vital for such patients to keep an up to date list of their healthcare providers contacts and their medical dosages plus diagnoses. The healthcare provider's contact information will be of help to the patient in case they require emergency services or medicines from drugstores (Math et al., 2015). There exist challenges when the needs of these unique patients are to be met. Because of the increased demands, the available resources are often strained in cases of emergency. An example is licensed experts can be inaccessible immediately after the occurrence of a tragedy (Roudini, Khankeh, and Witruk, 2017). It can be so difficult for the emergency preparedness team to manage such patients because coping with the various problems these patients experience can prove very difficult to manage.
References - Harris, B., Beurmann, R., Fagien, S., &Shattell, M. M. (2016). Patients' experiences of psychiatric care in emergency departments: A secondary analysis. International emergency nursing, 26, 14-19.
Math, S., Nirmala, M., Moirangthem, S., and Kumar, N. (2015). Disaster management: Mental health perspective. Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine, 37(3), p.261.
McFarlane, A., and Williams, R. (2012). Mental Health Services Required after Disasters: Learning from the Lasting Effects of Disasters. Depression Research and Treatment, 2012, pp.1-13.
Roudini, J., Khankeh, H., and Witruk, E. (2017). Disaster mental health preparedness in the community: A systematic review study. Health Psychology Open, 4(1), p.205510291771130.