Purpose
CISM is designed to help people deal with their trauma one incident at a time, by allowing them to talk about the incident when it happens without judgment or criticism. The program is peer-driven and the people giving the treatment may come from all walks of life, but most are first responders or work in the mental health field. All interventions are strictly confidential, the only caveat to this is if the person doing the intervention determines that the person being helped is a danger to themself or to others. The emphasis is always on keeping people safe and returning them quickly to more normal levels of functioning.
Normal is different for everyone, and it is not easy to quantify. Critical incidents raise stress levels dramatically in a short period of time and after treatment a new normal is established, however, it is always higher than the old level. The purpose of the intervention process is to establish or set the new normal stress levels as low as possible.
Read more about this topic: Critical Incident Stress Management
Famous quotes containing the word purpose:
“To me the sole hope of human salvation lies in teaching Man to regard himself as an experiment in the realization of God, to regard his hands as God’s hand, his brain as God’s brain, his purpose as God’s purpose. He must regard God as a helpless Longing, which longed him into existence by its desperate need for an executive organ.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
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—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;”
—Bible: Hebrew Ecclesiastes (l. III, 1–2)