By Evi Tsakali,
In December I attended a seminar regarding an issue every humanitarian practitioner should be informed about: psychological first aid. It is an important component of humanitarian action that we usually tend to forget, shifting the emphasis to material, financial and medical aid, ignoring the fact that, sometimes, the most precious aid comes from within.
What is PFA all about?
Psychological First Aid is humane, supportive, practical help to people that have recently been affected by psychologically pressuring factors. It includes:
- Non-intrusive, practical care and support
- Estimation of needs and worries
- Listening, without putting pressure
- Provision of relief and help for others to feel calm
- Helping people connect to services, information or other forms of social support
- Protection from further harm
What PFA is NOT about
- It is not something only professionals do
- It is not professional counseling
- It is not “psychological relief”
- We do not ask the people seeking help to analyze what happened
- Despite the fact that PFA requires us to be available to listen, we do not put pressure on anyone to talk
Can we be touchy? The dos and don’ts of human touch and display of affection when it comes to PFA
When it comes to touching the person we are helping -out of affection, understanding, or simply to express support- the general directive is one: we do not touch if we do not know it is allowed. Especially when working with kids, we may feel the need to display affection, to hug them for example. However, we ought to be careful. When it comes to children, a hug could create a pattern in their head: a “whoever hugs me is a good person” pattern. That can be dangerous, as for example, in the cases of the refugee camps in Ritsona, Thermopiles and Malakasa (in Greece), the first people to approach the camps were known pedophiles of the region. In the sector of humanitarian action and practice, no action or move should be out of context. It would also be interesting to ask ourselves at this point, whose needs do we cover by displaying affection, the children’s or, in fact, ours? If the answer is the second, then we are making a crucial mistake: by victimizing ourselves, the person we are helping will have to be the savior, and if they do not save us, then we may subconsciously attack them psychologically. As humanitarian practitioners we need to be both vulnerable and resilient at the same time. Many organizations working with refugees and other vulnerable groups may refuse to provide their employees with psychological support. However, no one is a hero. And a crisis is a chaos by itself; there is no need to add our own chaos to it.
Basic principles of PFA
- Prepare: get informed about the emergency, the available services, the forms of support and issues regarding security and protection
- Control: the security, the people with apparent urgent needs and/or stressful reactions.
- Research and connect: people with the respective services and information.
- Listen: with your ears, eyes and heart
References
- IASC Reference Group MHPSS (2020) Operational Considerations for multisectoral mental health and psychosocial support programmes during the Covid-19 pandemic, IASC. Available here.
- Williams R, Bisson JI, Kemp V. Designing, Planning and Delivering Psychosocial and Mental Health Care for Communities Affected by Disasters. Chapter 16 in Disaster Psychiatry, Second Edition. Edited by Robert J. Ursano, Carol S. Fullerton, Lars Weisaeth, Beverley Raphael. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
