SCHOOL CRISIS

School Crisis



School Crisis

Introduction

After students experience a traumatic event, group counseling is an effective tool to offset the effects of grief and distress. Following a school crisis, successful school-based intervention requires interdisciplinary coordination between school psychologists, counselors, school social workers, teachers, and administrative staff. Within a short time after a traumatic event, school personnel are encouraged to create student support groups, helping students cope with intense feelings and assuring them that they are not alone. Interventions are most effective when schools pre-determine an action plan, train staff to respond with correct intervention techniques, and seamlessly transition into crisis intervention and support mode. Quick professional response through organizing and offering children's support groups will help to increase school stability and alleviate the effects of traumatic events.

Body

When faced with overwhelming challenges following a school disaster, students and staff have the capacity to pull together, grieve together, and start the healing process. Expanding on this statement, school based mental health professionals (SBMHPs) have the unique opportunity of galvanizing social and emotional support within the school community. Their role in the school crisis will be discussed in detail in this topic. A school crisis brings chaos that undermines the safety and stability of the entire school. It exposes students to threat, loss, and traumatic stimulus and undermines their security and sense of power. A variety of tragedies and stressful events impact students and staff, including death of a student or teacher, acts of terrorism, and school shootings. Some school crises, such as school bus accidents, happen outside the school building. Other crises, such as a student and teacher deaths or natural disasters (e.g. earthquakes, floods, or tornadoes) may occur either at or away from school. Additionally, exposure to gangs and bullying also contributes to a toxic school environment and precipitates acts of school violence. Highly publicized school shootings and catastrophic disasters have increased school administrators' awareness of the need for crisis plans. (Balk, 2011) Currently, almost 95% of US schools have crisis plans in place to guide emergency response. When a crisis occurs, the school's crisis plan goes into effect immediately, dealing solely with the crisis at hand. In practice, school-based crisis plans and intervention are typically reactive rather than proactive, most efforts going into immediate response rather than into prevention efforts and planning. However, recent efforts note the importance of prevention in school-based crisis planning efforts. In the aftermath of a school crisis, interventions range from counseling with individual students to meeting with large debriefing groups. Focusing on mental health, SBMHPs (i.e. school counselors, school psychologists, and social workers) assist in helping staff, faculty, and students address their feelings in both the immediate situation and during the weeks and months following the tragedy. This support is offered to counter the effects of trauma. (Cohen, 2006)

Both small and large scale school crises devastate children and teachers, particularly those centrally involved or closely tied to precipitating events and subsequent fallout. Survivors have strong emotional responses because trauma always involves loss and loss precipitates ...