Trauma-Informed Care for Disaster Response Personnel: Strategies and Interventions
A special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601). This special issue belongs to the section "Health Care Sciences".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 November 2026 | Viewed by 8
Special Issue Editor
Interests: mental health; deployment; military personnel; disasters; emergency responders; crisis intervention; gender; PTSD
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
A trauma-informed approach to disaster response is gaining increasing importance, yet there is still room for improvement. This is particularly true for disaster response personnel. If these forces are unavailable during prolonged or recurring crises, the consequences are likely to be more severe. Optimized procedures before and after deployment can minimize these risks. Ideally, these measures should be tailored to the specific organization. This is because different professional groups may react differently to such scenarios, and logistical and bureaucratic factors also play a role.
There are already good overviews of what trauma-informed care should include. Here, we define the scope as a spectrum ranging from performance and mental training before critical deployments to destigmatization and the provision of professional mental health support afterward. A trauma-informed framework emphasizes safety, trustworthiness, peer support, collaboration, empowerment, and cultural sensitivity. For military personnel or emergency responders, this means that leadership structures and operational protocols must integrate psychological resilience as a core component rather than an optional add-on.
Incorporating such approaches requires interdisciplinary collaboration between psychology, public health, and crisis management. Systematic evaluation and longitudinal studies are needed to assess which interventions are most effective across different contexts and cultures. Moreover, policy-level support and institutional commitment are essential to ensure sustainability. For this Special Issue, contributions on these topics are welcome, especially those that provide evidence of existing measures, introduce innovative practices, or critically assess barriers to implementation.
Dr. Ulrich Wesemann
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- PTSD
- public-health
- anxiety
- depression
- mental health
- disasters
- emergency responders
- military personnel
- crisis intervention
- anger
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