Disasters
2017; Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; Volume: 23; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1097/pra.0000000000000269
ISSN1538-1145
Autores Tópico(s)Disaster Management and Resilience
ResumoNovember 2017. In an editorial in the New York Times on September 2 entitled “The week the earth stood still,” Timothy Egan, referring to Hurricane Harvey, said that “most of us were still trying to fathom what 9 million gallons of water would feel like,” adding that Harvey dumped “enough water in southeastern Texas to equal almost 20 times the daily discharge of the Mississippi.” Houston is my home, so I know what this unbelievable storm felt like. I was one of the lucky ones; my street became a river several times, creeping up the lawn, but never beyond. But the scenes of families camping out in the convention center or the stadium or the mall, with flooded homes to return to or to abandon, were not broadcasts on the screen of far-away places but were right here, all too real, just down the street. It was our turn to be responsible and responsive to each other, and massive mobilization of rescue teams and of citizens helping citizens was visible at every turn. But then a few days later, I watched news coverage of the monsoon floods in Mumbai and in much of India and countries nearby, where at the time over 1400 known deaths and counting had occurred. One forlorn woman was interviewed sitting on a mat at the side of a road. Her shack of a home had been swept away. “I had a cow and a goat,” she said, “but they died. Now I have nothing. I don’t know what to do.” Can you imagine? And her situation is matched by the plight of thousands of refugees fleeing war-torn parts of the world, lucky if their boat doesn’t capsize, with nothing but the clothes they’re wearing and maybe a satchel carrying a few remnants of their lives. Of course I realize that hardships and disasters are not new. Are they getting worse? More frequent? More savage? More destructive? I don’t know. What I do know is that we see more of them—live, as they happen, like never before. There is nothing “fake” about the scenes brought to us on network news, unless the relentless nature of the coverage mesmerizes us so that we feel guilty when trying to go about our not-so-dramatic, but productive, lives. In some ways, then, our challenge may be to keep things in balance. The reach of the media will continue to grow, and, as the world becomes more and more connected, I believe that it’s important to know what is happening on the planet. Empathy for those who are far away and in distress may not help them directly, but it may motivate us to be good neighbors to each other. Like the remarkable teamwork shown by Texans rallying to rescue Houstonians in peril. In this issue of the Journal, Greytak and colleagues describe the use of rapid response teams and code teams to better meet the needs of psychiatric inpatients who have nonpsychiatric medical illnesses requiring immediate attention. While valuable, these teams are reactive, and the authors provide a template to proactively identify patients at risk to develop such crises, to allow preventive intervention. Also in this issue, Wortzel and colleagues take issue with the authors of a recently published piece in Scientific American entitled “Suicide risk assessment doesn’t work,” arguing (persuasively, in my book) that suicide risk assessment “still matters.” While these prevention systems are not designed for large-scale disasters, they are based on a principle of preparedness that can be applied in many forms. Plans need to be in place before the crisis occurs, whether the crisis involves an individual in distress, or a natural or man-made disaster such as Hurricane Harvey, or the many present and future disaster zones throughout the world. John M. Oldham, MDEditor
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