Mental Health by the Red Cross Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Mental Health by the Red Cross - Essay Example The five different articles utilized in this paper are from a variety of backgrounds, ranging from the purely medical and scientific to reports by media professionals and concerned community members. The given paper aims to streamline and narrow the research scope and clearly flesh out a more coherent and viable research question. The Red Cross, founded in 1919 has been providing emergency relief services all over the world in all manners of disasters since almost a century, but it was not until 1989 that the need for addressing the mental health needs of disaster survivors was tabled seriously. Over the subsequent years Red Cross mental health services have developed and improved by leaps and bounds, evolving to provide both the victims of disasters as well as the workers and volunteers who help them to deal with the immense mental trauma and stress experienced by survivors and witnesses of such disasters. Red Cross mental health care has developed to provide a wide variety of cross-sectional mental care help to all types of affected parties, presenting a cross-functional and highly versatile approach to mental health care needs of all affected parties, whether victims or helpers. Mental health care begins with an assessment of the patients’ needs and requirements, this is often a complicated requirement as survivors of disaster victims are generally unaware of any mental trauma to themselves and instead focus on the more physical aspect of their wellbeing. Their care needs don’t usually immediately turn to mental health services (M. Hartsough, Don, Planning for Disaster: A new community outreach program for Mental Health centers, 1982). There is definitely a need for a mental health care outreach program that are linked to the disaster relief efforts. Such strategies need to be intrinsically related to three main components of disaster relief such as: Helpers, services, recipients and locations (Golan,