A year ago, I wrote this blog, urging a shift from focusing primarily on self-care as the antidote to vicarious trauma/secondary traumatic stress to a broader concept of creating cultures of staff wellness and resilience which includes self-care as well as changes in organizational practices, protocols and policy. It is gratifying to see visible progress toward that shift as illustrated by two recent articles. One from the Worcester Telegram about a proposed policy by the Massachusetts legislature to mandate mental wellness training for law enforcement officers and one from the Aiken Standard in South Carolina about how therapy dogs in one organization help calm clients and staff. See the excerpts below:
Rep. James Lyons, R-Andover, and Rep. Timothy Whelan, R-Brewster, a former Massachusetts trooper from the Worcester area, filed a bill earlier this year that would mandate mental wellness training for police officers....If the bill goes through in 2018, the municipal police training committee and the State Police Academy will have to establish mental wellness and suicide prevention training for recruits in basic training and as a component of in-service curriculum, something that is not yet available.
Read the complete article here
The staff at center benefit from the dogs, as well.
“All our staff deals with a lot of vicarious trauma, so you’ll see them going out, sometimes our nurses will go out there,” Meehan said.
Read the complete article here
How are you adding to the movement to create cultures of staff wellness and resilience? Share your stories here and tweet them to @HealthFedMARC #staffwellness
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