Psychological debriefing

Debriefing is a word now popularized in the English language. It is also an intervention that is widely used inresponse to a range of traumatic and stressful experiences. Debriefing infers a capacity to relinquish or unload what has happened or is known. It is customary now to consider it as applicable as an acute intervention in situations ranging from stresses and incidents in the workplace to the violence of war, ethnic conflict, and the devastation of natural disasters. Ursano states that debriefing is a systematic process of education, emotional expression, cognitive reorganization through provision of information, fostering meaningful integration and group support [ 1]. Debriefing as an intervention is applied typically in the immediate post trauma period. While there have been many different formats, some focusing more on a continuum of care with building coping skills, and others on education, the most widely used model is that of Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD), developed and more recently evolved by Mitchell and Everly [ 2].