It might be easy to recover from a physical injury with a few bandages and medications, but recovering from trauma, especially after a disaster, is not easy. Events like these leave a great impact on the mind which, if not treated in time, can continue to affect the patient for many years to come. It is important to learn the advantages of Psychological First Aid training.
What is Psychological First Aid?
Psychological First Aid is a training course that helps participants understand the effects of stress, loss, trauma, and grief. It is important for each participant to understand these effects so they are able to help themselves or others handle life’s challenges by building up resiliency and establishing coping strategies.
Mental health is an essential concern of today’s world, which needs to be adequately addressed. Recovering from trauma is one such type of mental illness where the person can stay in the zone of the event for a long time if he or she does not receive help at the right time.
Psychological first aid is provided with a highly trained and experienced instructor. The Instructor will go through specialized training to help facilitate courses with case-based learning and to support their students to understand how to build resiliency to their emotional, psychological, and social well-being.
Anyone is allowed to take this course as long as they are 16 years of age or older. The main goal of this course is to teach self-care and how to care for others who may be suffering psychologically.
How Psychological First Aid Helps Us
Besides recovery from disasters, psychological first aid courses also provide training about how to help people suffering from anxiety, depression, and stress, which are common mental health issues. The stigma of society makes it difficult for the patient to reach out for help which is why it is so important for people to understand the advantages of psychological first aid.
However, you would be able to recognize and understand the situation of the person in a much better way after taking a psychological first aid course. Mental health is directly concerned with our overall well being, and a psychological first aid course is a practical approach that can be adopted and provided by first-line responders.
The curriculum centers around the 4 cycles of Look, Listen, Link, and Live. Each contains specific things to do in order to get control over the situation.
Look involves recognizing the signs of stress within yourself and understanding that you are experiencing stress. Listen involves assessment and awareness of the surroundings and your own feelings. Link involves the actions you decide to take based on your assessment of the situation to ensure your needs are met. And finally, life refers to a balanced and content state of being.
Let’s look at the 5 advantages of psychological first aid, also known as the components that are generally covered in a psychological first aid course and how they make the course essential.
Advantages of Psychological First Aid Training
1. Creating A Calm Situation
One of the advantages of Psychological First Aid training is to create a calm situation. Developing a quiet situation is crucial both before and while you are responding and connecting with the person. If you stay calm by speaking and acting calmly, the patient will develop trust and calm down after they feel that they are in a safe place.
It’s not easy to stay calm in a traumatic situation; therefore, if you are struggling with calming, you can go for simple tools like breathing in and out slowly, counting to four.
You can ask your patient to follow similar steps. This is the first benefit of a psychological first aid course as it trains you on how to maintain a calm atmosphere.
2. Giving Hope
The second advantage of a psychological first aid course is that it trains you on building hope. Hope is the belief that no matter how tough the situation is, it will somehow get better.
To create hope with a realistic approach, you are trained on how to point out the positive aspects of the event and discuss the steps that can be taken shortly.
Giving and maintaining hope is as crucial for the patient as it is for you and your group members to take care of the individuals.
3. Creating Self Efficacy
Efficacy is an essential tool of psychological first aid courses and is the ability that helps you in achieving your required results.
You can develop self-efficacy in individuals by making them a part of their recovery and rescue. The individuals should be reminded of the strengths they have and how they use these strengths to improve the situation for themselves and their companions.
Efficacy eliminates the feeling of helplessness and changes the role of the individual from the victim to a member of the team, making it one of the advantages of Psychological First Aid training.
4. Developing A Sense Of Safety
This component of the psychological first aid training tells you about how important it is for individuals to feel safe. By creating a sense of safety, you are communicating directly with your fight or flight system of your brain.
You can make the individual feel safe by telling them about how the particular traumatic situation is over and how you and your teammates are contributing to making the scene safe.
5. Establishing A Connection
You can create a connection between the individuals with the social support that they can count on. This can include their family members or their pets. You can build a connection with the patient by using their name and developing a partnership of rescue.
The above five are some of the many components that are addressed in a psychological first aid course. By taking any such course, you would be able to make connections, hope, calming, safety and self-efficacy with you in your medical kit on the go.
Register for a Psychological First Aid Training
Coast2Coast offers Psychological First Aid training courses for private/group training. If you have a group of eight or more participants, you may inquire about setting up a private training course. Registration is simple! Pick a desired date and location for your training course and we will send an experienced Canadian Red Cross instructor to you with any training equipment you may require. If you have any questions regarding our private training courses, please be sure to contact us. We can’t wait to teach you the advantages of Psychological First Aid training!
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