Handling Stress After a Traumatic Event

Sometime in our lives we will unfortunately witness or be impacted by a traumatic event. We hear about these situations in the media all of the time…a very disgruntled employee who kills their boss and then commits suicide; witnessing the terrorist attacks of the World Trade Center towers; a bank teller who is robbed at gun point; a bus accident involving the death of children; or a natural disaster like that of the recent earthquakes and tsunami that hit Japan. All of these situations create what is called critical incident stress.

We bring the topics of stress management and emotion management as part of National Stress Awareness month. And tonight, we focus on Handling Stress after a Traumatic Event. We will talk with Denise Thompson with Crisis Response Consulting, about how you can identify the signs and signals of this kind of traumatic stress; and mechanisms for coping during these difficult times.

Denise Thompson is the founder and owner of Crisis Response Consulting, a graduate of Florida State University, a licensed clinical social worker and a Lt Col in the Air Force Reserves. Recently she served 8 years of active duty, including 2 deployments following September 11, 2001. During this period of active duty, Denise served as Chief, Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Deployment Operations and 5 years as Chief, Behavioral Health for the Air Force Reserve Command (AFRC) Surgeon General. Prior to her activation in 2001, Denise was in private practice working with adults and children affected by traumatic events. Denise has also provided crisis intervention and organizational consultation following airplane and helicopter crashes, homicides, suicides, line-of-duty deaths, man-made and natural disasters, robberies and combat.