Critical Incident Response Services

When a traumatic event occurs, such as a natural disaster, colleague's death or workplace violence, MHN can help you plan and implement a response that helps employees recover and gets your company back to business as usual in a timely manner.

After experiencing trauma, personal reactions vary. However, certain responses are overwhelmingly common:

• Typically, there's an initial sense of shock and disbelief that lasts for approximately 24 hours. This emotional numbing protects the individual from the full impact of the incident.
• After this initial period, the individual is likely to experience a variety of effects, such as nightmares, intrusive thoughts (in which the individual involuntarily re-experiences the event or part of the event), sleep disturbance, irritability and inability to focus.

Critical incident response services help those affected alleviate feelings of guilt and responsibility and overcome the trauma. We partner with a national network of 14,000 counselors with specific expertise in trauma recovery to provide pre-incident preparation, acute care support, and post-incident follow-up.

The main objectives of critical incident response services are to:

• Reduce post-traumatic stress symptoms
• Limit the phobic reaction of returning to work
• Maintain morale

Getting Assistance

MHN's standard EAP solution includes 20 hours of critical incident support per incident, with an unlimited number of occurrences during the contract term. To purchase critical incident response services on a standalone basis, contact us at (800) 327-7526, productinfo@mhn.com or, if your workplace has already been affected by a traumatic incident and you need immediate assistance, (800) 533-3720.

• Assistance, crisis management and planning can begin immediately.
• Onsite critical incident stress debriefings are available to:
  • Help employees cope
  • Normalize the experience
  • Remind people that talking about the incident is healthy
  • Encourage employees to access their support networks
  • Educate employees about the likelihood of post-traumatic feelings of vulnerability, loss of control and memories of previous traumas