How can Faith-Based and Community-Based Organizations (FBCOs) provide spiritual and emotional support during an influenza pandemic?
Category: Planing and Response Questions
Answer:
Providing counseling and other ways to reduce stress will be a vital role for FBCOs during a pandemic event. Your staff and volunteers may be asked to provide support to sick people, their family members, and congregational leaders who will be under increased stress. Questions may arise about why innocent people suffer. Those who have lost loved ones may need support in working through the grieving process.
It is also important that those providing counseling understand and respect their own limitations and training. In providing spiritual and emotional support, members of the clergy will play a different role from lay volunteers, and both will play a different role from congregation members who are licensed mental health professionals. Some congregation members, for whatever reason, may need to refrain from providing support to a particular person or in a particular instance, and this should be respected.
FBCOs can also develop a mental health or counseling hotline, or they may let congregation members know about an existing mental health or counseling hotline that can be reached during a pandemic or other emergency.
In addition, some FBCOs may be able to help ensure that any educational materials related to mental health are culturally sensitive and are available in a variety of languages. Trusted community leaders can help reduce any stigma associated with using mental health resources by fostering a safe environment in which it is all right to talk about and deal with stress and by linking people in need to those services.
Finally, congregation, community, and other organization members and emergency responders need to be trained to recognize that they must maintain their own emotional and spiritual well-being if they are to be in a condition to attend to the emotional and spiritual care of others. While helping others can be personally rewarding, it can also cause a lot of stress. The long hours, difficult conditions, and the extensive exposure to human suffering can adversely affect even the most seasoned professionals.
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Last Updated: 11/06/2007
