title: Skills for Psychological Recovery: Evaluation of a post-disaster mental health training program.
abstract: Skills for Psychological Recovery (SPR) is a brief skills-based approach to assist community members to better cope after a disaster or other tragedy. This paper reports on an evaluation of a large SPR training and support program following floods and cyclones in Queensland, Australia. The program sought to recruit, train and support competent SPR trainers; provide systematic high-quality training in SPR skills for practitioners; improve the confidence of a large number of practitioners to use SPR; and encourage practitioners' use of SPR with community members. Trainers recruited to the program facilitated 49 training sessions for 788 practitioners across Queensland. Trainers were assessed by practitioners to have high-level competencies to run training sessions. Practitioners reported improved confidence to use each SPR intervention following training and at 6 months post-training. Based on available data, more than 6 out of 10 practitioners used an SPR intervention during the follow up period, with each intervention used by over half of the practitioners at both 3 and 6 months. The most frequently reported barrier to using SPR was not having seen a community member with problems requiring SPR. For trainers, a psychology background and cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) orientation were unrelated to their competencies to facilitate practitioner training sessions. For practitioners, a psychology background and to some extent a CBT orientation were related to confidence to use SPR interventions. In summary, this study provides details of an evaluation of a large-scale mental health training and support program to enhance response to meet the mental health needs of those affected by disaster.
authors.affiliation: Phoenix Australia and Department of Psychiatry; The University of Melbourne ; Melbourne, Australia.
authors.forename: Darryl
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Wade
authors.affiliation: Queensland Health; Queensland Government ; Brisbane, Australia.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Crompton
authors.affiliation: Phoenix Australia and Department of Psychiatry; The University of Melbourne ; Melbourne, Australia.
authors.forename: Alexandra
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Howard
authors.affiliation: Phoenix Australia and Department of Psychiatry; The University of Melbourne ; Melbourne, Australia.
authors.forename: Naomi
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Stevens
authors.affiliation: Phoenix Australia and Department of Psychiatry; The University of Melbourne ; Melbourne, Australia.
authors.forename: Olivia
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Metcalf
authors.affiliation: UCLA/Duke University National Center for Child Traumatic Stress; Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences; University of California ; Los Angeles, CA USA.
authors.forename: Melissa
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Brymer
authors.affiliation: National Center for PTSD; VA Palo Alto Health Care System ; Palo Alto, CA USA.
authors.forename: Josef
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ruzek
authors.affiliation: UCLA/Duke University National Center for Child Traumatic Stress; Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences; University of California; Los Angeles, CA USA; National Center for PTSD; Dartmouth Medical School; Dartmouth, NH USA.
authors.forename: Patricia
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Watson
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology; University of New South Wales ; Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Bryant
authors.affiliation: Phoenix Australia and Department of Psychiatry; The University of Melbourne ; Melbourne, Australia.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Forbes
keywords: Skills for Psychological Recovery; disaster; mental health; recovery; training program