Target Audience: Open to individuals working with adults, adolescents, or children
Psychological First Aid (PFA) is an evidence-informed modular approach to help children, adolescents, adults, and families in the immediate aftermath of traumatic events. Traumatic events may be defined as various natural disasters, public health emergencies, campus tragedies, as well as personal crisis situations.
Individuals affected by a disaster or traumatic incident, whether survivors, witnesses, or responders to such events, may struggle with or face new challenges following the event. PFA is built on the concept of human resilience. The model covers eight core actions on how to assist survivors of traumatic events by addressing survivors’ and responders’ needs and concerns, reduce the initial distress caused, and foster short- and long-term adaptive functioning and coping.