Debriefing individuals affected by violence

For some time there has been a growing concern about violence in the workplace. This concern has tended to focus on employees with jobs which involve them in witnessing and dealing with the effects of disasters or traumas, such as the police, firefighters and ambulance personnel, rather than the actual victims of violent incidents. In the early 1980's, a psychological intervention known as either critical incident or psychological debriefing was introduced by the emergency services as a way of reducing the long term effects of exposure to traumatic events. The techniques involved in debriefing have been described by a number of workers (Dyregrov, 1989; Mitchell & Everly, 1993; Raphael, 1986). In all these models of debriefing, the debrief is undertaken with groups of victims, all of whom have been involved in a single traumatic incident as emergency workers. This paper describes the common features of the debriefing process; explains why debriefing is helpful; differentiates between debriefing and counselling; explores and contrasts three models of debriefing. Finally, it looks at a model of individual debriefing developed within the British Post Ofice to meet the specific needs of employees who have suffered personal attacks or other traumatic incidents.