Psychological First Aid: Field Operations Guide

For Disaster Responders

Developed jointly with the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, PFA is an evidence-informed modular approach for assisting people in the immediate aftermath of disaster and terrorism: to reduce initial distress, and to foster short and long-term adaptive functioning.

It is for use by first responders, incident command systems, primary and emergency health care providers, school crisis response teams, faith-based organizations, disaster relief organizations, Community Emergency Response Teams, Medical Reserve Corps, and the Citizens Corps in diverse settings.

The 5th appendix consists of Handouts for Survivors (PDF).

The Psychological First Aid Manual Contents

NOTE: PFA is adaptations are available for specific audiences (schools, religious leaders, homeless) and translated into other languages on the National Child Traumatic Stress Network website.*

Training on PFA

• Training in PFA: Psychological First Aid Online.* Login to learn about this intervention.
• Subscribe to PFA Channel and View the PFA Online Videos.*

PFA was created with the Terrorism Disaster Branch of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network as well as others involved in disaster response. Production of this information was supported by SAMHSA.

Hardcopies of the PFA Field Operations Guide can be purchased at www.castlepress.net/nctsn* for around $10 each.

NOTE: The latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader* is needed to download these files. Not having the latest version (8) of this reader may cause error messages that the PDF file is "damaged".