This training examines psychiatrists’ roles in disaster preparedness, response, and long-term recovery through lessons from Hurricane Katrina and the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. It emphasizes population-based care, psychological first aid, collective healing, and culturally responsive strategies that restore safety, autonomy, social connection, and hope. The training also highlights structural inequities, community trauma, youth vulnerability, and the importance of integrating mental health services into coordinated disaster-response systems.

Key points and strategies include:

• Identifying the five essential elements of effective disaster mental health recovery: safety, calm, efficacy, connectedness, and hope.
• Explaining how psychological first aid reduces distress and supports survivors’ immediate practical, emotional, and social needs.
• Differentiating normal post-disaster stress reactions from symptoms requiring specialized psychiatric assessment and treatment.
• Analyzing how racism, poverty, displacement, and environmental injustice influence disaster vulnerability, rescue, and recovery.
• Applying culturally responsive, community-based strategies that strengthen resilience, collective healing, service coordination, and long-term recovery.

These recordings of the Department of Mental Health (DMH) Quarterly Psychiatrists’ Meeting (QPM) are restricted. They are provided specifically for DMH psychiatrists who missed and/or want to review the quarterly meeting.