Postdisaster psychosocial intervention: a field study of the impact of debriefing on psychological distress

Following a catastrophic natural disaster, the authors evaluated whether brief psychological intervention (debriefing 6 months later) reduced disaster-related psychological distress as measured by the Impact of Event Scale.

Two groups of subjects who had been exposed to Hurricane Iniki in Hawaii were assessed before and after participating in a multihour debriefing group. The intervention aimed to provide ventilation of feelings, normalization of responses, and education about normal psychological reactions to the disaster in a context of group support. To provide a partial control for the passage of time, the pretreatment assessment of the second group was concurrent with the posttreatment assessment of the first group.

A repeated measures analysis of variance indicated that Impact of Event Scale scores were reduced in both groups after the treatment.

There is preliminary empirical support for the effectiveness of postdisaster psychological intervention and for the feasibility of treatment research in postdisaster environments.