George W. Doherty

While natural and man-made disasters continue to garner attention from international onlookers, the emergency and disaster management community continues to look for ways to better prepare and respond to these scenarios. The United States’ federally-mandated four-pronged approach – prevent, prepare, respond, and recover – allows for a comprehensive methodology when considering what actions should be taken before, during, and after a given event. Yet much of what is categorized as ‘emergency management’ by the general public is physical – stocking supplies, having adequate shelter, and clean-up, for example. A truly all-encompassing plan includes the psychological and sociological implications of disasters. Editor George W. Doherty presents the “Proceedings of the 6th Rocky Mountain Regional Disaster Mental Health Conference” to address these important aspects of emergency and disaster management.

“Proceedings of the 6th Rocky Mountain Region Disaster Mental Health Conference” contains the presented material from the November 2007 conference held in Cheyenne, Wyoming. In keeping with its theme ‘From Crisis to Recovery: Resilience and Strategic Planning for the Future’, subjects such as police suicides and traumatic stress in the workplace, psychological first aid for both responders and the communities they assist, ethical considerations, strategic planning and state-level implementation of behavioral health response, the importance of non-verbal communication and multicultural work, and special population needs are discussed throughout the text. As a graduate student in emergency and disaster management, I found the subject matter to be relevant, interesting, and applicable to the many facets of the field.

While the text reflects no discernible spelling, grammatical, or punctuation errors, I found the format to be ‘uncomfortable’. The book’s size is larger than I would consider normal or typical and the font size is enormous. It seems as though most books, especially those utilized by the emergency management community, are smaller and easy to throw in a bag to read on the go. Although lightweight and in paperback format, my copy of the book quickly began showing wear and tear because of its cumbersome size.

Editor George W. Doherty’s “Proceedings of the 6th Rocky Mountain Region Disaster Mental Health Conference” is a fantastic resource for behavioral health related subjects in the emergency and disaster management field. A must have for any responder’s library!… (meer)

This book is a wonderful resource for those interested in first responders and the mental impact that events play in their lives. It is a collection of papers that were presented at the conference. As a wife of a first responder I found it very interesting to read. Is it something that everyone would want to read, more than likely not. While some of the papers were very informative pointing out that the stress that first responders have is significant unfortunately it did not always supply an answer as to how best to deal with this added stress that the job presents. I shared some of the papers with my husband and he also stated that it is no secret that the job causes stress but the million dollar question remains how to help deal with the stress and not prejudice the person or job.… (meer)

This book is not a detailed outline of the Conference itself, but rather is a publication of the papers presented at the meeting. The papers themselves cover a wide variety of topics ranging from the study of police officer suicide rates (which are startlingly high) to the study of how trauma victims (in this case, bomber pilots) can subsequently inflict emotional trauma on their loved ones.

The principle theme of these papers is not disasters themselves, but the emotional health (and especially the response to mental/emotional trauma) of those who must deal with these disasters on a regular basis, form rescue workers to the military.

The papers themselves are short reads and very interesting. The papers are also written in "plain English," making use of little technical jargon or psycho-babble. This makes this book ideal reading material for those times when you want some "substantial" reading, but do not have the time to invest in a longer work. I read it while waiting for my daughter's horse-riding lessons, while feeding the baby, and during breaks at work.… (meer)