Citation

Bronisch T, Maragkos M, Freyer C, Muller-Cyran A, Butollo W, Weimbs R, Platiel P. Crisis 2006; 27(1): 42-47.

Affiliation

Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Munich, Germany. bronisch@mpipsykl.mpg.de

Copyright

(Copyright © 2006, International Association for Suicide Prevention, Publisher Hogrefe Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

16642915

Abstract

After the Tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia, India, Sri Lanka, and Africa, the German government set up a crisis task force that implemented crisis-intervention teams covering Thailand (Phuket and Khao Lak), Sri Lanka, and Sumatra. Two crisis teams were sent to Phuket; the first one on 28 December 2004, and the second one on 3 January 2005, each for an average of 1 week. This intervention was primarily for the benefit of German citizens and their expatriates and relatives caught up in a major catastrophe as well as the German helpers. This article describes the organizational structures of the German crisis intervention, protective factors for the helpers, psychiatric syndromes--often acute traumata, the problems of the identification process for relatives, and crisis intervention itself. Consequences for further crisis intervention after natural disasters are discussed.

Language: en