A team of psychological first aiders is being trained by the Community Security Trust to provide on-the-spot assistance in the event of a serious incident such as a terrorist attack on Britain’s Jewish community.
The volunteers could also be despatched to assist non-Jews affected by a major accident or atrocity.
Relatives of those caught up in an ongoing incident would be able to turn to the team for help, and those with existing mental health conditions or casualties experiencing serious shock will receive assistance.
A spokesman for the charity confirmed: “CST’s new team will be led by psychologists and psychotherapists, offering psychological support to all those affected by terrorist attacks and serious incidents, whether Jewish or non-Jewish.
“It has taken considerable planning to reach this stage, and the events of recent months show that it is happening not a moment too soon.
“We invite other members of the community with the correct professional expertise to contact CST and volunteer to help with this sadly necessary initiative, which we intend to offer across the UK.”
As well as a psychological first aid unit, the CST will also run a Psychological Response Team (PRT).
According to Dr Nikki Scheiner, the psychologist leading the unit, the work of the PRT will be threefold.
“We have one programme for people who develop PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) three months down the line or even longer, because you can get delayed onset trauma,” she said.
Dr Scheiner has adapted the World Health Organisation’s training, working with emergency services to produce a programme suitable for the Jewish community.
She said: “We will deliver the training wherever we need to. If we need to go to Glasgow, Redbridge, Manchester, we’ve got the training, it’s written up.”
In the event of an attack or serious incident “we will also be there on the day as a kind of supervisory role for the first responders. If they’re stuck or if they say ‘look, Mr X needs a greater level of expertise or intervention’, we will be there, and we will then do the kind of psychological education in the first week, normalising.
“So say an incident happens on day one, at about day four or five we would be organising a group meeting — at a school or community hall — and talking people through what they might expect in the first month after an attack.
“The objective would be to normalise the reaction that people would be having, and the kind of reactions that one expects after an unprecedented attack.
“This would be things like sleep disturbance, increased or decreased appetite, people being more irritable, people not wanting to see friends, socially withdrawing, people becoming more tearful. So very much the kind of biological symptoms of mood change — and we would expect that.”
Dr Scheiner stressed that most people’s symptoms would resolve within one month without any psychological treatment.
“What all the psychological literature says is ‘don’t intervene’. That the only time to do a real psychological debriefing is if you’re working with soldiers or the emergency services.
“But with members of the public, who don’t expect to encounter these levels of stress, a debriefing is not recommended, and not only is it not recommended, but it can be very harmful.”
Dr Scheiner confirmed that this service would not be limited to the Jewish community in the UK.
“It’s something I feel quite strongly about, because it will help the Jewish community in the UK, as well as inter-communal relationships.”
