Emergency professionals will receive training on stress and suicide risk in training sessions organized by the Ministry of Public Health and the Official College of Psychologists, which will serve to give them the tools to distinguish risky behaviors.
The Day was presented this morning by the Minister of Public Health, Francisca García Maeso; the Delegate of the Government, Sabrina Moh; the coordinator of the Emergency and Disaster Intervention Group (GIPEC) of the Official College of Psychologists of Melilla, Carmen Arraras; and the General Director of Citizen Security, Francisca Fernández.
The Training Day, which is recognized of health interest by the Ministry of Public Health, will be held this Friday from 16:30 to 21:00 hours in the auditorium of the Melilla Campus of the University of Granada (UGR).
García Maeso, in his speech to the media, noted the coordination and involvement between the local administration and the General State Administration to work together for this purpose.
She also recalled that the agreement between the Ministry of which she is the head and the GIPEC of the Official College of Psychologists of Melilla aims to work to serve citizens and professionals involved in emergencies.
“The concern conveyed to me from GIPEC is the importance of information and dissemination of their work among professionals for the activation of this group in case of emergency and catastrophe,” he explained. For this reason, he added, meetings have been held both with the Council, for the City and its professionals -Local Police, Firefighters, 112 and Civil Protection- and with the Government Delegation, for representatives of the state level -National Police, Civil Guard, 061 and Ingesa professionals.
“This Day is aimed at the professionals of emergencies and catastrophes, who are dedicated in body and soul to put their knowledge, their skills and, sometimes, their life to save others physically and emotionally,” he said.
The Government Delegate, for her part, has advocated “the coordination of all the administrations and all the agents involved so that we achieve the success that is being pursued with these days”.
“It is important to know the tools we have in the city and learn what are mechanisms to activate it and, above all, to get the most out of it in a topic as sensitive as suicide,” said Moh.
Therefore, he recalled that, from the moment they proposed to him to hold this meeting, he agreed “because I think it is vital and necessary and because it is important that we coordinate and that we are able to develop this type of such interesting days”, while reiterating his dissipation to collaborate in everything in which the Delegation is useful.
Risk behaviors
For her part, Carmen Arraras, referred to the motivation of this day, since emergency professionals “are often the big forgotten ones when a catastrophe or a critical situation occurs”. Therefore, the objective of the day is that “they learn to detect the signs of stress that may lead them to need to ask for help”.
Also, he added, “we want to focus on how colleagues can detect suicide risk indicators in other components of the teams, since the professions with the greatest risk of suicide in Spain are the security forces, National Police, Civil Guard and health services.”
Therefore, “what we want is to give a tool to all these professionals so that they know how to distinguish those risky behaviors that other colleagues may present and what they have to do if they detect them”.
In addition, the Conference will serve to publicize GIPEC, since it is a resource that has existed in the city since 2009, “but which, until recently, has not been well known by emergency professionals.” “We want to explain what we are used for, what situations they can call us in, given that we are not only serving people affected by catastrophic or emergency situations, but also GIPEC can help emergency professionals,” he said.
“We are also there to serve these professionals because they face multiple traumatic situations throughout their professions and also need to be helped and listened to,” he said.
The day will have two parts. First there will be a talk about what GIPEC is: in what situations it can be activated, for what cases they can be called… in the second part will be addressed the stress in the emergency professionals, the types of stress they face, what these professionals indicate, the way to intervene…
In addition, there will be talk about suicidal ideation signals, how to help the partner in which we test these signals; or about the communication of the professional with the affected people in catastrophic or stressful situations, among other issues.
The coordinator of the GIPAC thanked the Councillor of García Maeso, the Government Delegation and the General Directorate of Citizen Security for their invaluable support, because the institutional support of the administrations is something that we have been demanding for a long time and that we believe is necessary to be able to do our work properly.”