Читать книгу Counseling Practice During Phases of a Pandemic Virus - Mark A. Stebnicki - Страница 8

Chasing plagues had never entered my consciousness as a mental health and rehabilitation practitioner, counselor educator, and researcher. However, those who work in the laboratory, out in the fields, and in bat caves to collect data on viruses that could potentially alter the history of humankind are champions. Who would have thought that spending months collecting samples of bat feces and saliva could be such important work? Indeed, viruses have existed on planet Earth since the beginning of humankind. The nature of viruses is that they change their genomic sequences and mutate into highly infectious diseases such as the novel (meaning “new”) coronavirus (COVID-19). The constant comingling of different genomic sequences globally has created dangerous new pathogens that have lethal consequences for humankind.

Counseling Practice During Phases of a Pandemic Virus was inspired by my more than 30 years of experience as a mental health and rehabilitation practitioner, counselor educator, clinical supervisor, and researcher. My areas of interest are chronic illness and disability, disaster mental health response, and traumatic stress. My work has guided me to provide mental health and rehabilitation services to active-duty service members, veterans, veterans with disabilities, and military families. I have worked in hospitals, a physician’s office, nursing homes, outpatient clinics, and a variety of rehabilitation programs. My interest in disaster mental health response was accelerated when communities where I lived and worked were at the epicenter of school shootings, workplace violence, hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, and earthquakes. Despite all these experiences, I am a student all over again studying a new type of natural disaster—a pandemic virus. So now I am chasing plagues.

Metaphorically speaking, the new anthem in disaster mental health response may not look like the old mental health hymnal. There are human casualties, restrictions on our freedoms, government mandates, and public health guidelines for protection and safety. We as Americans have made multiple attempts to try and restore some normalcy in our lives. It requires a significant amount of psychological/emotional real estate to build a treatment center within our mind, body, and spirit to try and make ordinary sense out of an extraordinary stressful and traumatic event. The operation tempo is relentless because the viral enemy combatant never sleeps or takes a day off. Thus, it is essential that we prevail on the COVID battlefield. Overall, the medical, physical, and psychological costs of fighting an unseen enemy such as COVID-19 and its mutant strains have been imprinted on our mind, body, and spirit.

The fields of psychology and counseling must cultivate new research and training opportunities for mental health and allied helping professionals to work across all age groups and cultures during phases of a pandemic disaster. We must create pandemic identification, prevention, and therapeutic intervention programs. We should never again delay a disaster mental health response as we did during the summer and late fall of 2020. The current and predicted increase in anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress, and substance use disorders is pervasive across all age groups. The COVID-19 pandemic has spawned an increase in suicidality that is the direct result of untreated, undertreated, and unrecognized mental health symptoms and conditions. Accordingly, the psychology and counseling professions are challenged with recon-ceptualizing disaster mental health programs and services for pandemic survivors using new technology (i.e., telebehavioral health) and other therapeutic interventions yet to be developed and implemented.