Enhancing resilience: Let TSR Team help

  • Published
  • By Capt. Anthony Wilson
  • 341st Medical Group
MALMSTROM AIR FORCE BASE, Mont. --  How do fire fighters, police officers and emergency medical personnel (first responders) respond to tragic scenes then go home and live normal lives? How did the emergency teams who survived the terrorist attacks at ground zero in New York go on and live normal lives? It has become standard practice to help first responders talk through, defuse and decompress after working at very difficult scenes.

Malmstrom has a Traumatic Stress Response Team that does just that for Malmstrom's first responders. This team is composed of highly trained professionals and peer support team members who assist personnel who are exposed to traumatic events.

All active duty Air Force installations have a TSR team. The new concept of TSR replaces and broadens the scope of the Critical Incident Stress Management program. TSR team core membership consists of personnel from Life Skills, the Airman and Family Readiness Center, and the Chapel. Twenty volunteers from throughout the base serve as peer support and act as a liaison for the team to their particular unit. The primary goal of the TSR team is to foster resiliency in those exposed to potentially traumatic stress. Although first responders are the most likely to encounter traumatic events, anyone can be exposed to them.

Reactions vary from person to person. Some typical stress-related reactions are feeling "keyed up," on edge, restless, hyper-vigilant, jumpy, fatigued or irritable; having outbursts of anger or feeling sad and crying; experiencing difficulty concentrating; sleep disturbances and nightmares; fluctuating appetite, or preoccupation with the traumatic event. In most cases, stress-related symptoms, when present, are short-term in duration. However, sometimes symptoms persist and help is available to prevent long-term negative impact.

Learning about the sudden unexpected death of someone you know is often a very difficult experience. When a co-worker dies unexpectedly due to a car accident, heart attack, drowning or suicide, the news and sudden shock of the loss can be potentially traumatic. The work section and the unit are often deeply affected by the loss.
When events like these happen, the TSR team can give a unit information and guidance to help it through its grieving process, educate people on what symptoms are normal and what basic things can be done, and they can help the personnel regain some sense of normalcy in an abnormal situation.

Malmstrom's TSR team has three customers. It assists the Wing Commander 24/7 in being ready to respond and assist whenever an event impacts the installation. It also gives group and squadron leadership input to help them in leading their units through a rough process from incident notification to the weeks and months after the funeral, if necessary. Last, and most importantly, the team wants to assist all the members who were directly involved with the incident, closely affiliated with the victim(s), and the personnel involved in the recovery efforts to come to terms with what has happened and be able to ultimately move on without long-term impact. No one knows when disaster or death will occur next but the TSR team stands ready and prepared to assist everyone in remaining resilient.