Student Development

Debriefing - Critical Incident Stress Management

Debriefing After a Critical Incident

The UB Counselling team aims to lessen the traumatic impact of critical incidents by providing timely debriefing sessions. All members of the Counselling Team are professionally trained in assisting people to recover from and come to terms with their experiences.

What is a Critial Incident?

A critical incident is any extraordinary event that is significantly distressing, thus overwhelming the usual, normal abilities people have to cope with a situation. Critical incidents undermine people's sense of safety, security and competency in the world.

A critical incident might be:

retrenchment/downsizing
accident
disaster
personal loss
sexual harassment/assault
bullying
death of a colleague/peer or family member
severe illness of a colleague/peer or family member

What is Debriefing?

Debriefing sessions - usually in a group, sometimes individually - allow participants to retell the incident and express their associated feelings in a confidential setting. The purpose is to intercept and prevent unnecessary distress and self-recrimination.

Debriefing may help participants to:

learn the whole story of the event
put the event into perspective
understand that their experiences are normal reactions to the abnormal events
learn about common reactions to experiencing trauma
look after themselves in the wake of an incident
minimise damaging impact to personal well-being, family or work life
recover more quickly.

It is very common, in fact normal, for people to experience emotional aftershocks when they have passed through a horrible event. Sometimes the stress reactions appear immediately after the traumatic event; sometimes they may appear a few hours or a few days later. And, in some cases, weeks or months may pass before the stress reactions appear. This does not imply craziness or weakness. It simply indicates that the particular event was just too powerful for the person to manage earlier.

How to Organise a Debriefing

Contact your local counsellor(s) or organisation which can provide support and give information when:

you have to break distressing news to a group/individual
you are aware that an incident has occurred that is distressing to others
you are experiencing the 'aftershocks' of a distressing incident or event
you would like to discuss what a useful response might be to a situation.

Counsellors will provide interventions tailored to meet the situation and experience of those affected.

For the University of Ballarat Community information about Critical Incidents and Calling for Counselling Services is listed on the internal Occupational Health and Safety web page under Incident and Emergency Management.

Contact details for the University of Ballarat Counselling Service.

To view our confidentiality statement click here.