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MFT / LCSW

Mental Health Response to Mass Violence and Terrorism

9.75 - CE credit hours training

$60.94 - Cost of course

This page contains important information about the course, including training details, a comprehensive course description, learning objectives, and source references. We encourage you to review each section to gain a clear understanding of the course content, educational goals, and supporting materials before beginning your training and taking the POST TEST below.

Target audience and instructional level of this course: foundational
There is no known conflict of interest or commercial support related to this CE program.

Mental Health Response to Mass Violence and Terrorism

Follow the link below, read the material and then take the 55 question post test

Read the Course Material:
Mental Health Response to Mass Violence and Terrorism

55 Questions

1. As per Office for Victims of Crime, 2000; Center for Mental Health Services, 2000b, growing evidence suggests that terrorism and mass violence places victims, bereaved family members, and emergency response personnel at risk for long-term physical, emotional, and psychological consequences.
2. The U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) has developed a working definition of "mass violence," which is "an intentional violent criminal act, for which a formal investigation has been opened by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) or other law enforcement agency, that results in physical, emotional, or psychological injury to a sufficiently large number of people as to significantly increase the burden of victim assistance for the responding jurisdiction."
3. Some victims of mass violence may come to feel humiliation, responsibility for others' deaths, survivor guilt, self-blame, and unworthy of assistance, thus assigning stigma to themselves.
4. Research comparing the psychological effects of human-caused versus natural disasters has yielded equivocal results (Norris et al., 2002 Green and Solomon, 1995). Considering the consequences of causation exclusively, studies have not consistently demonstrated that one type of disaster is "worse" than the other.
5. Terrorists seek to intimidate a civilian population. The killing of innocent people becomes a vehicle for delivering a message. When children are among those who are killed, the community loses its sense of being able to protect and provide safety for its children.
6. Each and every survivor of hate crimes feels devastated and embittered, suffers lasting psychological problems, and fails to find a path to resolution that allow him to move on with his life.
7. Men have a higher prevalence of depression, anxiety, and PTSD (Kessler et al., 1994) and may have increased vulnerability due to socio-cultural and biological factors.
8. Post-traumatic stress reactions should not be interpreted automatically as exacerbations of pre-existing illness. Likewise, survivor resilience is enhanced through the absence of psychiatric or substance abuse problems, biological and neuroendocrine "protection," family stability, and financial resources.
9. North et al. (1999) found that nearly one quarter of the blast survivors studied had one or more active post disaster psychiatric disorders, and one-third met the criteria for PTSD at 6 months after the bombing. One Thirds (33 percent) of the respondents with a previous psychiatric disorder at any time in their lives suffered a psychiatric disorder after the bombing, compared to 29 percent with no psychiatric history.
10. According to Raphael and Martinek, 1997. During the grieving process, the contents of dreams typically reflect longing for the deceased by experiencing them as alive and then feeling a harsh sense of loss upon waking and realizing that the person is dead.
11. Survivors and bereaved loved ones go through a repetitive up-and-down emotional and physical process as they work through extreme trauma and unexpected bereavement. This nonlinear process can seem endless and relentless.
12. A review of studies on childhood traumatic stress found that, children do not experience the full range of posttraumatic stress reactions.
13. In relation to children, the level of exposure to the trauma is strongly associated with the severity and course of post-traumatic symptoms and grief, post-traumatic stress, depression, and separation anxiety reactions are independent of, but interrelated with, one another.
14. The untimely, traumatic deaths of children or grandchildren may be especially difficult for older adults. An important sense of continuity of the family, its traditions and legacies, may be lost. Family support and contact important to the elder may be diminished due to the next generation's preoccupation with the aftermath of the tragedy and their immediate losses. With the reduced availability of family support, the elder may fear being moved to an institution. This fear may cause underreporting of concerns, difficulties, and reactions related to traumatization and bereavement.
15. Health status, cultural background, prior traumatization, religious affiliation, proximity of family and other social support, and living situation do not influence the older adults' experience of mass violence and terrorism.
16. Survivors from particular groups may live in a context of poverty, discrimination, or marginalization as illegal immigrants and face high rates of violent crimes in their neighborhoods. Exposure to chronic community violence influences how an individual responds to a discrete, larger scale violent event.
17. When cultural, racial, or ethnic groups within a community are affected by an incident involving mass criminal victimization, mental health providers must consult with community leaders, cross cultural experts, and culturally competent mental health practitioners to effectively assess mental health effects and needs.
18. Comprehensive training must be taught by a qualified mental health professional or team of trainers with collective experience and knowledge in disaster, trauma, crime victimization, and traumatic bereavement. Trainers should have formal training on these topics. In addition, the training team collectively needs prior community trauma response, crime victim assistance, and disaster mental health experience, particularly with long-term recovery issues.
19. Representatives from law enforcement, emergency services, crime victim assistance programs, faith based organizations, the ARC, or Federal agencies assisting the community should never attend the training. The presence of these individuals can distract the class and is not ideal for training sessions.
20. Comprehensive training aims to help mental health care professionals how to Understand human reactions to incidents of mass violence and terrorism including incident-related risk factors, at-risk survivor groups, post-traumatic stress, traumatic bereavement, and key events affecting the recovery process.
21. Sleep disturbances, changes in job performance, periods of crying and increased use of alcohol are all behavioral stress reactions that mental health providers may face.
22. Each worker has his or her own pattern of stress responses. Some may respond physically with headaches or sleep problems; others may have trouble thinking clearly or may isolate themselves from others. Mental health responders commonly experience many of the reactions listed with limited job effects.
23. Effective crisis mental health responders are flexible, easily able to establish rapport, respectful of differences among people, able to remain calm in the presence of intense emotional expression, and tolerant of ambiguity and confusion.
24. In short term interventions, the facilitator must determine which interventions are most relevant. Community outreach is often an important element of service delivery. A section on strategies and skills for effective outreach may assist with this less formal style of service delivery.
25. Special population workgroups include children, older adults, traumatically bereaved family members, people who lost their jobs as a result of the disaster, people with disabling injuries resulting from the incident, people in institutions and people with pre-existing disabilities.
26. Which of the following is one of the phases of response and reconstruction?
27. Which of these statements is incorrect?
28. Two of the eight dimensions of traumatic exposure associated with posttraumatic stress are:
29. For many survivors, social support contributes to
30. Survivors' acute reactions immediately after a life threatening violent incident range from:
31. Post-trauma reactions are expressed through different pathways:
32. Physical post traumatic reactions include:
33. Behavioral post traumatic reactions include:
34. When traumatic circumstances surround the sudden death of a loved one, or when the bereaved was also involved as a victim in the event or witnessed the death, the bereaved must cope with both trauma and grief. For many survivors and loved ones, post-traumatic reactive processes override mourning, and grieving is initially blocked. Instead of cherishing reminders of the deceased, the person may avoid them because they conjure up traumatic memories. This statement is made by:
35. Which one of the following is an adaptive reaction that protects survivors of homicide from the full force of the tragedy?
36. Children between the ages of 5-11 who have experienced mass violence can experience which of the following symptoms:
37. Screening and Assessment checklist for older adults include which of the following?
38. Immediate and long-term interventions with adults, followed by similar information related to children and adolescents, are presented. The "immediate" time frame generally refers to the:
39. One of the key principle for mental health intervention is:
40. Which of the following statements is incorrect?
41. Comprehensive training addresses issues such as:
42. Training staff to identify vulnerabilities and measure stress symptoms helps workers to:
43. As a result of over-identification with survivors, mental health responders may not:
44. Reasons trauma workers are especially vulnerable to compassion fatigue include:
45. Psychological and emotional symptoms of mental health provider stress reactions include:
46. Training combines various techniques that include:
47. Often, mental health providers are asked to give presentations to different audiences including survivor groups defined by:
48. Schools are a critical point of contact to reach children, parents, caretakers, and school personnel who have regular contact with children. However, gaining access to schools can be challenging .Access may be facilitated through
49. Other organizations serving children may be more accessible and welcoming of outside assistance include:
50. Identify strategies for outreach, relationship-building with community leaders and agency resources, and culturally sensitive interventions is an important objective of:
51. Sources of stress include which of the following?
52. Stress is:
53. Management of workload and balanced lifestyle is:
54. Survivor risk and resiliency factors include:
55. Survivor guilt and self-doubt are emotional reactions to a mass violence incident.
Mental Health Response to Mass Violence and Terrorism

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

Course Description

This course aims to provide the reader with the tools for an appropriate mental health response to mass violence and terrorism. A mass violence event can take many forms but is generally defined as an intentional violent criminal act that results in physical, emotional, or psychological injury to a large number of people. Mass violence can manifest itself through terrorist attacks, mass shootings, riots and bioterrorism attacks. For survivors and witnesses of mass shootings, suffering tends to be particularly severe. Studies have documented that survivors of mass shootings often suffer from post-traumatic stress Disorder (PTSD), major depression, anxiety disorder and substance use disorder.

But what are the most effective mental health responses following large-scale traumatic events? It is essential to understand how and when resilience-building interventions must be carried out, be it at the immediate, intermediate or long-term aftermath of an event. Information on the major lessons learned in behavioral health following episodes of mass violence is provided, and related issues are woven into the discussion of strategies for assisting victims, survivors and the community-at large.

Mental Health Response to Mass Violence and Terrorism

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

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Course Material: http://store.samhsa.gov/shin/content/SMA04-3959/SMA04-3959.pdf

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Learning Objectives

After completing this training the health care professional will be able to:

  • Assist victims, survivors, and family members cope with trauma and loss
  • Assist victims, survivors, and family members participate in the criminal justice process
  • Assist the community-at large in recovery through education, outreach, and support
  • Describe and manage service providers' own work-related stress responses.
  • Outline major lessons learned in behavioral health following episodes of mass violence, such as the tsunami, Katrina, etc
  • Assess risk and protective factors of various populations as regards to mental health and disasters or emergencies
  • Define crisis intervention
  • Identify signs and symptoms of distress
  • Describe and utilize tools for effective crisis interventions
  • Apply knowledge from this course to practice and/or other professional contexts.
Deborah J. Wolfe, Ph.D., M.S.P.H.
Director and Co-founder, Project Opportunity
Published by SAMHSA