There are numerous resources available to treat and assist victims of a disaster, these resources are available at all three levels of government, and for the most part they are easily accessible. One valuable resource found at the federal level to assist victims is the Homeland Security: 9/11 Victim Relief Funds. This fund was established in response to 9/11 terrorist attacks. It was created to assist the victims 9/11 with much needed financial support. The donations coming in were donated to over 250 charitable organizations and this made the funds easily assessable to the victims who needed them. In the first days following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, an unprecedented number of Americans contributed over $2.2 billion (some …show more content…
As stated earlier in the paper, individuals react differently to the same disaster. This means that the victim’s mental health and overall well-being is also going to be different. This paper has also discussed the psychological effects of the victims after the disaster. Now local, state and federal authorities must comprehend that mental health and overall well-being is a multidimensional concept this is difficult to measure. What effects one person mentally may not affect another. When a disaster occurs, there are many factors that must be taken into account that may affect a victim’s mental health and well-being. For example, if the disaster impacts person’s life than it will also affect their mental health and well-being. Moreover, if the victim loses a love one in the disaster it will drastically affect their mental health and well-being. In addition to this, what impact did the disaster have on the environment and the surrounding area can also be vital to a victim’s mental health and …show more content…
J., Christodoulou, G., Sartorius, N. (2005) Disasters and Mental Health, Hoboken, NJ, USA: Wiley, http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ashford/Doc National Institute of Mental Health, (2014) what is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Retrieved from http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd Perry, R. W., & Lindell, M. K. (2007) Emergency planning, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ashford/Doc Pitts, B. (2009) Katrina Scars Linger. CBS News Retrieved from http://www.cbsnews.com/ videos /katrina-scars-linger/ Sheras, P. (2005) How do you spell relief? Disaster relief, that it The Amplifier Media Psychology. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/divisions/div46/AmpFall05.pdf The Center for Mental Health Services, (2013) Natural Disaster, The National Child Traumatic stress Network. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and jointly coordinated by UCLA and Duke University. Retrieved from http://www.nctsn.org/
Credibility: I choose to speak about the Red Cross, because they offer relief to people at times when they own almost nothing. I have never personally experienced any of their relief services, but according to the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, 357 natural triggered disasters were registered in 2012. This shows that there is a great need for
Religion is considered as a pervasive force in this world. It shapes people as to how they behave and interact with almost everything present in the society. Influencing behavior, character formations, ideals, policies, standards are just among the dimensions and societal perspectives affected and impacted by religion. Because of these applications and implications in human lives and existence, religion should be understood deeply, particularly, on how it affects the world. Looking at the American perspective of the term "religion," it could be simply
In Stephen Prothero’s, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know and Doesn’t (New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 2007), 297 we discover the average American’s lack of religious knowledge. Prothero discusses religious illiteracy in three ways. How it exists, came to be, and just how to possibly solve this problem. Today religious illiteracy is at least as pervasive as cultural illiteracy, and certainly more dangerous. Religious illiteracy is more dangerous because religion is the most volatile constituent of culture, because religion has been, in addition to one of the greatest forces for good in world history, one of the greatest forces for evil. Religion has always been a major factor in US politics and international affairs.
Hurricane Katrina was considered as the worst hurricane in the history of United States. The winds and the rain were shattering people’s homes which collapsed and flooded. Thousands of people were suffering and dying. People were starving, and becoming dehydrated. Many people were left on the street and became homeless. After the hurricane, so many questions were left regarding the widespread damage and loss of loved ones. This devastating disaster destroyed the city of New Orleans and nearby cities and was estimated to cost $80 billion dollars in damage. State and local emergency in the affected area were struggling to perform urgent response missions such as emergency medical services, search and rescue, firefighting, giving food and water,
Natural disaster can be traumatic events that have a huge impact on the mental health of communities often resulting in an increase in mental health needs that don’t get met. In 2005, one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. History, Hurricane Katrina, hit the states of Louisiana and Mississippi affecting 90,000 square miles. In addition to the 2000 people killed and million displaced as a result of the Hurricane, a significant number of people, according to multiple studies, suffered and continue to suffer from mental health issues including stress, anxiety, depression and PTSD. After the Hurricane, communities were both physically and emotionally devastated leaving individuals without loved ones, homes, belongings or jobs (Rhodes, J., Chan, C., Paxson, C., Rouse, C. E., Waters, M. and Fussell, E., 2010. p. 238). The Gulf Coast, whose mental health system had been obliterated by the Hurricane, was in desperation of mental health services in order to prevent chaos and initiate recovery immediately. The U.S. government did not provide sufficient services; thus, illustrating how the affected communities’ mental health needs weren’t being met and continue to not be met today. The survivors of Hurricane Katrina did not receive sufficient mental health services due to lack of government action and lack of programs with the capacity to assist large numbers of people which resulted in the individuals and communities affected to endure homelessness, poverty, and mental health issues even till this day.
Claire B. Rubin’s second edition Emergency Management: The American Experience 1900-2010 is a wide ranging book that effectively breaks down over 100 years of America’s emergency response history. In the book, Rubin uses an array of previous emergencies and details local, state, and federal response efforts. In doing so, Rubin effectively portrays the ways in which the Federal Government has played an ever increasing role in emergency response. As Rubin states early in the book, the current mechanisms The United States has in place for emergency response and management have come into existence after many lessons learned from ineffectual response efforts in the past. These disasters, referred to as “focusing events” (p. 4), and they have
The Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act of 1988 amended the Disaster Relief Act of 1974. This new Act created the system in place today by which a presidential disaster declaration of an emergency triggers financial and physical assistance through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The Act gives FEMA the responsibility for coordinating government-wide relief efforts. It is designed to bring an orderly and systemic means of federal natural disaster assistance for state and local governments in carrying out their responsibilities to aid citizens. Moreover, Congress' intention was to encourage states and localities to develop comprehensive disaster preparedness plans, prepare for better intergovernmental
Even with all the damage that has been done, there are relief efforts for Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico’s government made a presentation of all the supplies they are going to need to help. The American Red Cross, Salvation Army, and Catholic Charities are all accepting donations for places that have been affected by the recent hurricanes. There are several more organizations working to help with relief in Puerto Rico: The Hurricane Maria Community Recovery Fund, UNICEF, One America Appeal, Habitat for Humanity, and Caritas de Puerto
What is the true meaning of religion in modern day? A lot of people these days claim different religions and have different ways of practicing them. Religion can be a touchy subject when brought into a conversation because of other people’s opinions. So what can someone do to keep an open mind instead of arguing? Listen to their point of view and try to understand it. America was originally called ‘the melting pot’ for a reason. This paper will explore what religion is and why it is so important.
Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act of 1988 (Stafford Act; Bucci 1), the ruling federal law for disasters. Regarding this rule, the federal government waives 75 percent to 100 percent of casualty response debt as long as FEMA has issued a disaster declaration. Meeting the qualifications for debt forgiveness is somewhat simple: the disaster inquiry must be “of such hardness and importance that direct response is above the means of the State and the distressed local governments and that federal help is mandatory”. The financial verge is still low: “when a state’s storm damaged costs of problem reach $1.29 per capita, for a few states is less than one million in loss. The uncertain provisions of the Stafford Act and minor casualties opening constitute tremendous encouragement for governors to inquire federal disaster announcement instead of being responsible for all costs, particularly at the time of tight financial plan.
Crisis interventions should be organized and well planned for them to be useful in crisis situations. As noted by Rosen, Greene, Young and Norris (2010) crisis counseling has become an important component of schools and community agencies to name a few, especially to the federal government, rendering assistance to communities recovering from disasters such as hurricanes and fires and other major casualty crisis. They noted culture and ethnicity is an important role in how people react and recover after disasters (Rosen et al., 2010). Disasters can, and does affect everyone from different ethnicities, but people from disadvantaged racial and ethnic communities, such as Blacks in New Orleans are often more severely affected, and encounter more difficulty recovering from the disaster. A factor that can affect minorities’ ability to recover is economic. Minorities usually have greater unmet needs after a natural disaster and are less able to handle economic losses due to disasters, which can in turn affect their mental health when they are burdened with necessities of life and trying to cope and live one day at a time with no one to turn to for support and real help. Minorities are often underserved in the use of conventional mental health services as noted by (Rosen et al., 2010) as was seen after Hurricane Katrina,...
The federal government's role in planning for, mitigating, responding to and recovering from natural and human-made disasters dates to the Congressional Act of 1803, which was enacted to provide relief from the aftermath of a devastating New Hampshire fire (Federal Emergency Management Agency, 2010). Later disasters in our nation’s history “reached catastrophic proportions in terms of deaths, injuries and property loss which focused government and public attention on the need to develop formal systems to respond to such events” (Waugh & Tierney, 2007, p. 27). By the 1970’s, more than 100 agencies were responsible for some element of emergency preparedness and response. Competing and sometimes duplicative programs were also instituted at state and local levels which compounded the complexity of response efforts. This broad-based, uncoordinated approach yielded a fragmented response posture, with roles and missions unclear across government, community and private sector lines.
From the beginning, disaster has etched itself into the very core of mankind. Disasters continue today, more violently and destructive than ever before. In the past two decades alone, there are multiple counts of disaster that still cause much distress from the mere mention of the name – September 11th, 2001; Hurricane Katrina in 2005; Hurricane Ike in 2008’ the 2010 Haiti earthquake; the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami of 2011; the Sandy Hook elementary shooting in 2012; the Boston Marathon bombings of 2013 – all of these are still the source of much sorrow and anger in many people’s lives. Disasters leave their mark in more ways than one, whether it’s property damage or monetary damage or taking the lives of many or few, they scar humans and leave destruction in their wake. The recovery process is often the government stepping in and aiding with money, volunteers donating money, and Red Cross helping out the families and people affected. But, where is the help for the people affected mentally? Physically and monetarily, they can recover but the trauma left from these disasters are what affect us the most. Because disasters leave so much damage - property, money, lives - in order for one to recover, the system of coping is required.
University of Tennessee Institute for Public Service. (2004, June 25). Mutual aid and emergency and disaster assistance agreement act of 2004 [Press release]. Retrieved from http://www.ctas.tennessee.edu/PUBLIC/web/ctas.nsf/0/39A89BC37A34C2F586256EBE006EC22A
Natural disasters can strike anywhere. They can be anything from storms to diseases and all of them can affect others. In the places where these disasters strike, the victims can get hurt or lose everything they have. The people affected by disasters are in need of someone to help them, and that is where I come in. Throughout my life, I have seen many things that have inspired me to go help those in need. These events, such as Hurricane Katrina, the Tupelo tornado, and the Ebola outbreak of 2014, have opened my eyes to reality, making me want to go outside my comfort zone to help others where disaster strikes.