March On Stress

At March on Stress, we are honoured to work with clients and contacts in the media, charities and other humanitarian organisations whose people are directly affected by the devastating war in Ukraine.

Our Managing Director, and trauma expert, Professor Neil Greenberg, said “For those organisations with people affected, or working with those affected, by current events I would advise that supervisors should be speaking to them regularly.

“Rather than simply saying ‘do make sure you support each other’ leaders at any level can actively monitor their staff, assigning or changing roles to reduce pressure, while at the same time ensuring support is actively fostered – for example buddying people up on shifts, having meetings to speak about the impact of the work which are psychologically safe and creating opportunities to meet for social reasons.

“Where staff may be affected, but events are not linked directly to their work or role, supervisors still have a crucial role to play in speaking to their team members about how they have been impacted by the current crisis and, if they have, then they should be asked what the organisation can do to help them.”

 Our work at March on Stress to help and support organisations affected at this time includes:

• Trauma Risk Management (TRiM) training – to provide in-house capability for organisations to support their trauma-exposed people through evidence-based peer support.
• TRiM response – where our experts either bolster an organisation’s existing TRiM team or provide a TRiM capability where one does not exist. Our experts will conduct planning meetings, TRiM incident briefings and one-to-one TRiM sessions and follow ups, using this proven and NICE compliant process to help those suffering as a result of trauma.   
• Reflective Practice – Reflective Practice sessions within organisations enable personnel to reflect on what has happened and to help them make sense of how what they have experienced fits with the experiences of their colleagues and organisation.
• REACTMH® – Bitesized training in how to have a psychologically-informed conversation, a really useful and inexpensive tool for anyone with line management responsibilities. A good complement to TRiM.
• Clinical services – including both full assessment and follow up clinical interventions and therapy options as required.

It is important to note that there is good evidence not to do psychological debriefing (which also encompasses trauma counselling and other forms of talking therapy) when the trauma is ongoing or in the immediate aftermath.

Mandatory psychological debriefing (including critical incident stress debriefing) or routine provision of trauma counselling, are now viewed as ill-advised and ineffective. For instance, a recently published paper by a group of researchers from the University of New South Wales[1], not only confirms that post-incident psychological debriefing [sometimes referred to as post incident trauma counselling] is ineffective but has the potential to cause harm.

Both UK and Australian national guidance documents on the management of PTSD specifically caution against the routine use of psychological debriefing/routine use of post incident ‘trauma counselling’[2],[3]. Additionally, NICE (2018) stated: ‘do not offer psychologically-focused debriefing for the prevention or treatment of PTSD’ 1.6.5 at https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng116/chapter/recommendations.

Other resources

The Royal College of Psychiatrists has a useful resource for after a traumatic event (although the event is still ongoing of course). This may assist those directly involved, as well as others who may not be involved but are finding the news stories difficult to deal with: https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mental-health/problems-disorders/coping-after-a-traumatic-event

Our experts would be happy to discuss support options for your organisation as well as provide advice on how you may best utilise your current support options at this difficult time, please get in touch at info@marchonstress.com.

[1] Joyce S, Modini M, Christensen H, Mykletun A, Bryant R, Mitchell PB, Harvey SB. Workplace interventions for common mental disorders: a systematic meta-review. Psychol Med. 2015 Dec 1:1-15. [Epub ahead of print]

[2] The Australian Guidelines for the Treatment of Acute Stress Disorder and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. July 2013 and 2020.

[3] NICE. The management of PTSD in adults and children in primary and secondary care. London: National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, 2005 and 2018.