Geriatric Mental Health Disaster and Emergency Preparedness

Chapter 7 Making the Community Plan 135
disseminate applicable information widely and to groups who may not hear
it otherwise.
Provide Preparedness Training in Partnership
With Community Organizations
The benefit of locating preparedness efforts in the community is the links
created among diverse organizations. One way to bring these groups into
increasing contact is to identify specific community agencies (e.g., police
and fire departments) as preparedness trainers and require local precincts
to offer basic preparedness training with community organizations. By
moving preparedness training into the community, more individuals will
have the opportunity to become engaged in the process and participate
actively in community preparedness efforts. By interacting outside of traditional
work roles or settings, the agencies designated as preparedness
trainers will connect with community stakeholders and gain perspective
on community assets, resources, and competencies.
Include Older Adults in Community
Preparedness Planning
Older adults bring prior experience, coping strategies, and wisdom to the
community preparedness process. In a study of older adults after serious
flooding in Kentucky, Norris and Murrell (1988) found that prior experience
with a disaster reduced the impact of a subsequent disaster on anxiety.
While older adults are not immune to the negative effects of stress, the ability
to deal with stressful situations across a lifetime may reflect successful
coping strategies. Community efforts would benefit from the wisdom,
experience, and perspective of older adults, and older adults would benefit
from finding a role in disaster planning and response and in developing
their social support networks. While physical disaster recovery work
may not be appropriate, older adults are poised to provide other forms of
tangible, emotional, informational, and appraisal support to disaster victims
(Norris & Murrell; Thompson, et al., 1993). In fact, older persons may
be excellent resources for helping to evaluate impairments in disaster victims’
quality of life by utilizing methods (Banerjee, Willis, Graham, & Gurland,
2009; Barrett & Gurland, 2001; Gurland & Gurland, 2008a, 2008b)
for evaluating restrictions of older victims’ choice and choosing processes,
thus facilitating the preservation and/or improvement in quality of life during
disasters. With an opportunity to provide social support in times of crisis,