Delayed Trauma Response in Crisis Management Personnel
When a large-scale State of Emergency occurs, area government agencies, such as fire, rescue, law enforcement, healthcare, and local government, must immediately convene to professionally engage in a real-time crisis response. Yearly training exercise aids in identifying weaknesses that need improvement and helps to mitigate natural fight-or-flight responses through repetitive enactment, but no drill can completely approximate the toll of a real-world situation. Individuals managing a crisis in emergency operations roles must rise to the occasion by suppressing their innate emotional reactions to be able to expertly function in their official capacities. This is much more difficult when children are highly impacted, such as with a school shooting crisis. First responders must set aside comparisons between victims and their own children to focus on the task of saving lives. Their attention must be on the casualties before them, not diverted with concern for loved ones who may themselves have been subjected to traumatic experience.
This essential need for situational awareness extends to the officials in crisis management, such as Public Information Officers. Someone serving as a critical point-of-contact for crisis communication must absorb information streaming in from all involved agencies without giving into distracting emotions that would lessen their role competence. Being among the first to see casualty lists, that may contain the names of loved ones and close connections, they must attempt to isolate their natural emotional responses. They must stoically perform spokesperson duties without inadvertently implying confidential information that could alarm stakeholders, until facts may legally be divulged to the public. Professionality is the key to disseminating crucial information clearly and accurately to intervening, primary, and secondary publics. Reporters must also train themselves to guard against becoming overwhelmed by emotion while covering highly emotionally charged events. They have a vocational and ethical responsibility to relay crucial information to a wide audience. A crisis may draw national attention, which extends the need for media engagement through daily briefings for several weeks.
An exhausting emotional toll besieges crisis response teams as suppressed feelings increasingly build to a breaking point. This burden is generally compounded with a lack of self-care, in the forms of proper nutrition and sleep that escalate physical burdens. Eventually, Emergency Operations Center personnel will disband, along with those running a Joint Public Information Center. Journalists will conclude their crisis reporting, and first responders will reengage in normal operations. Though the community will have had time to process their feelings since the event itself, those in critical crisis engagement capacities will only begin to let down their guard to release the floodgate of withheld emotion. The torrent can only be contained for so long before psychological effects begin manifesting. Gratitude must be offered with respect to the immense toll that our community champions are willing to take to ensure our collective safety.
© Leigh N. Eldred 2025
References
Hapney, Jr., T. L., & Lovins, J. (n.d.). Public Relations Case Studies: Successes & Failures—Business, Nonprofit, Government, Education, Health Care. Stukent. January 23, 2025, https://my.stukent.com/student
