During a disaster or public health catastrophe,
citizens expect firefighters, police and hospitals to be
prepared. But what about their clergy?
In times of crisis, many people look to familiar
religious leaders for comfort and guidance. But can clergy
cope when whole congregations, or even strangers, turn to
them?
With a $186,374 grant from the federal Health
Resources and Service Administration, the
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral
Sciences in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine will
collaborate with the
Center for Public
Health Preparedness in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg
School of Public Health, the University of Maryland's
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and three
religious groups to develop a disaster preparedness
curriculum and conduct a pilot program to train at least
240 Baltimore-area religious leaders in responding to the
mental health and spiritual needs of people following a
disaster.
The grant was made to the state Department of Health
and Mental Hygiene and distributed to Johns Hopkins by the
Maryland Hospital Association.
"Having religious leaders trained to respond to
individuals who seek trauma-related services following a
man-made or natural disaster is a vital — but long
overlooked — element in Maryland's disaster response
work force," says Lee McCabe, associate professor of
psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins.
"The project will help spiritual caregivers help
residents of the greater Baltimore area, particularly
disadvantaged minorities in the eastern and western
corridors of Baltimore City, to address personal
difficulties that might arise during crises," said McCabe,
who also is director of the Psychiatry Department's Office
of Behavioral Health Care and principal investigator on the
project.
Religious groups participating in the project include
Clergy United for Renewal in East Baltimore, known as CURE;
the Hispanic Ministry of the Archdiocese of Baltimore; and
the Institute for Mental Health Ministry, which already has
provided mental health training at local ministerial
conventions and statewide meetings.
The clerical groups will spend four months with mental
health experts from Johns Hopkins and the University of
Maryland developing a disaster preparedness curriculum that
reflects the religious and ethnic culture of the clergy and
the vulnerable minority population with whom they work.
Among the mental health issues to be addressed in the pilot
training program are principles of individual and group
psychological first aid, as well as learning to recognize
the differences between distress and dysfunction. The
latter can be more incapacitating and is more likely to
require professional intervention.
Also to be covered are congregational crisis
communications and the identification and use of referral
resources. Eventually, a disaster training manual and a
"tool kit " for clergy and church leaders will be
developed.
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