Good things happen if you do them
We've had different sets of experts get together and discuss the empirical evidence to support the notion that good things will happen if you do them. That's what I'm going to call psychological first aid, and it has certain underpinnings—safety, calming, connection, efficacy and hope.
• Safety is about removing people from a threat.
• Calming happens when you want to lower the state of arousal so people can function, concentrate and take concrete steps towards what they need to do to protect themselves.
• Connection: People's basic need to connect with others and not be isolated needs to be attended to.
• Efficacy occurs when someone is capable of taking action on their own. When they do so as a member of a group, that's collective efficacy.
• Hope: The idea that the world is predicable and we will get through it, that's hope.
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Questions Journalists Can Ask
If journalists could take these five ideas and infuse them in their messages, I'd be very happy. Absent this, we don't have leadership set up to handle grief. Continuity of operations goes way beyond business. It's continuity of life as we know it.
• How do we manage massive grief and loss?
• How do we perform ceremonies when we can't attend them?
• How do we support people who have lost a lot when we can't touch them?
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