Evaluation of mental health emergency preparedness among health professionals

The purpose of this study was to identify if health professionals report an increase in mental health preparedness abilities with having only two mental health components as part of a 2-day preparedness training conference. At each of three conferences, identical pretraining and posttraining surveys were administered to conference participants. A 3-month follow-up survey was administered to respondents who volunteered to complete them. At pretraining, respondents (n = 603) reported generally greater mental health preparedness abilities than non-mental health preparedness abilities. This trend continued at posttraining (n = 490) and at 3 months posttraining (n = 195). Participants reported significantly increased mental health preparedness abilities at immediate posttraining and at 3 months posttraining from pretraining. This current study suggests that even when mental health items are included as a secondary component of disaster preparedness training, significant and meaningful growth in participants' confidence in their abilities can occur.