Innovative, precise, and descriptive terms for group crisis support services: a United Nations initiative

Terminology borrowed from other disciplines for use in crisis intervention is inadvertently open to misinterpretation and misrepresentation. Misconceptions about terminology are most common when terms are transmitted across social, cultural, national, language, and attitudinal boundaries. Critical Incident Stress Management, which is a subset of crisis intervention, encountered that exact problem with three of its terms: demobilization, defusing, and Critical Incident Stress Debriefing. Several flawed studies based on misinterpretations of the meaning of these terms have appeared in the literature. The studies may have stimulated some practitioners of crisis intervention to incorrectly conclude that those interventions were ineffective. Professionals within the Critical Incident Stress Management Unit of the Department of Safety and Security of the United Nations suggested alternative and augmented terminology to reduce the potential for further misinterpretations of Critical Incident Stress Management procedures.