The Yale Center for Traumatic Stress and Recovery (YCTSR) provides trauma-informed treatment and services to children and families impacted by traumatic events. The YCTSR highlights clinical experience and research to provide child and family traumatic stress intervention and trainings to law enforcement and first responders.

This pamphlet defines and describes indirect trauma, which is sometimes also referred to as compassion fatigue or vicarious trauma. It explains how indirect traumatization occurs, highlights effects of indirect trauma, and suggests ways to cope.

This fact sheet explores stress management for staff as they return from their disaster response assignment. The resource explores stress management techniques that can be introduced to the workplace to encourage self-care for all team members.

The ProQOL is a commonly used measure of the negative and positive effects of helping others who have experienced suffering and trauma, including disaster survivors. The ProQOL has sub-scales for compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress.

This website provides information about trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for a variety of audiences.

This tip sheet explains how families are typically notified after a disaster that their relatives are missing or deceased, and it emphasizes the importance of working with local authorities on notification of families in a sensitive, appropriate way. It offers do’s and don’ts for disaster responders helping local and national authorities make families aware that their relatives are missing or dead following a disaster.

Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and Android devices, this app is designed to support responders in meeting the mental health and substance use-related needs of disaster-affected communities. It can be used to access preparedness and response resources and find local mental health and substance use disorder treatment services for referrals.

The SAMHSA Disaster Distress Helpline is a 24-hour helpline staffed by trained counselors. The helpline can be used by any person, including a first responder, who is experiencing emotional distress due to a disaster. Responders may also want to make disaster survivors aware of this resource.

This web page provides information for people who are traveling out of the United States to support individuals and communities, including those that have been affected by disasters. It suggests steps for humanitarian aid workers to take before, during, and after travel to protect their physical and mental health.

Designed for a range of types of disaster responders, this pocket guide describes the cycle of stress in the body and highlights signs of stress. It also presents tips for managers to prevent and manage stress for themselves and their workers during disaster response, as well as offering simple, practical stress management techniques for responders.

Provided for healthcare professionals and others responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, this hour-long webinar recording defines burnout, compassion fatigue, moral injury, and resilience; explains the typical timeline of reactions to disasters; and discusses crisis standards of care. It also covers ways to manage burnout, compassion fatigue, and moral injury, and to increase personal and organizational resilience.

This web page includes links to resources for healthcare professionals, leaders, and others responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. It features fact sheets on healthcare worker self-care and stress management and on leading teams as they respond to the pandemic, as well as webinars, websites, and publications on disaster behavioral health, Psychological First Aid, sleep health, and fostering team resilience.

At this web page, the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies presents a range of resources for learning about and coping with stressors associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. A section for healthcare workers, a key group of first responders in the pandemic, features webinars, tip sheets, and articles on topics including coping with pandemic-related stress, self-care, and strategies for resilience.

Written for mental health and substance use disorder treatment professionals, this online article identifies stressors that affect disaster response workers, including physical hazards and risk of loss of coworkers and friends, and highlights mental health risks of work in rescue and response. The article also highlights protective factors and approaches to stress management that have gained traction and proven effective among responders.

This part of the American Red Cross (ARC) website describes ways for people to volunteer with ARC before, during, and after disasters to improve community physical and mental health outcomes. For those interested in serving as disaster volunteers with ARC, free online disaster mental health training is provided.

This part of the EHS Today website is an information resource for disaster and other emergency responders. It features articles, webinars, and other resources about emergency management, disaster preparedness for businesses, specific disasters, fire safety, and other topics.

The ERHMS™ framework provides ideas for protecting disaster and emergency responders in an emergency of any size and in any setting. Designed for incident command staff members, leaders in response organizations, healthcare professionals, and responders themselves, the framework can be used to develop and implement a plan for monitoring and surveillance of responder health before, during, and after deployment.

Part of a program of the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation, the 16 Firefighter Life Safety Initiatives encompass efforts to increase safety and well-being for firefighters and emergency medical services personnel. Initiative 13 focuses on psychological support. The web page dedicated to this initiative includes information and links to relevant resources.

This tip sheet describes how responding to acts of violence, civil unrest, or terrorism can affect responders. The tip sheet lists steps that leaders can take in support of the mental health and resilience of their teams, tips for workload and stress management, and signs of compassion fatigue and related issues.

This resource collection includes web pages, manuals, guides, technical assistance documents, mobile apps, and training on topics including responding to a radiation emergency, responding to a nuclear detonation, triaging survivors, and managing hazardous materials. Items may be useful both to responders and those who manage responders and response efforts.

This web page features information and resources related to the National Alliance on Mental Illness’s #FirstRespondersFirst initiative, which was launched to support frontline responders. The page includes a description of some of the stressors facing responders, links to information for healthcare and public safety professionals, and videos of responders talking about the COVID-19 pandemic’s impacts on them.

This resource collection includes materials to help both mental health treatment professionals and first responders during the COVID-19 pandemic. Resources address helping individuals manage stress during the pandemic, self-care, and approaches to assistance such as Psychological First Aid.

The Code Green Campaign is an organization focusing on first responders and their mental health. Their goal is to raise awareness of the high mental illness rates among first responders, and to provide education for first responders on a variety of topics. Their website links to several resources and trainings for first responders to learn more about taking care of their mental health.

This 25-minute webcast discusses compassion fatigue and compassion satisfaction, two effects disaster responders may experience when helping survivors. It also provides tips for disaster responders to manage the negative effects they may experience while on duty.

This web page provides information for responders to disasters and other emergencies about the importance of stress prevention and management in their work and offers tips for building resilience and managing stress before, during, and after a response. Links are also provided to several related resources.