Living through a disaster can mean having to cope with a lot of stress and anxiety – not only for survivors but also for those who help to respond. For people who already struggle with behavioral health issues - mental health, substance abuse, or managing stress - recovering from a disaster may be even more challenging. So incorporating behavioral health into all of our plans and policies is an ASPR priority, and we’ve just taken an important step by developing the HHS Disaster Behavioral Health Concept of Operations (CONOPS).
The CONOPS describes how HHS will bring its resources together to support your community’s behavioral health needs before, during, and after a disaster. The CONOPS presents the framework we’ll use to manage federal disaster behavioral health personnel, response and recovery assets, and actions. It describes how HHS transitions from normal day-to-day operations to a response to address the behavioral health needs of disaster survivors, responders, and at-risk individuals, including children. The CONOPS also explains behavioral health strategies and actions for preparedness, as well in response and later in recovery.
The CONOPS offers new approaches and also institutionalizes best practices from past experiences. For example, when the Haiti earthquake struck two years ago this month, we provided behavioral health support to our HHS responders as part of their medical preparation for deployment, so they would know what to expect and what signs of mental distress to look for in themselves and their teammates. We embedded mental health professionals on our public health and medical teams throughout the Haiti response. And when our teams returned, we made sure they knew what reactions to look for later and how to seek help down the road – because behavioral health needs may surface long after an event.
We know that being successful in addressing behavioral health needs requires a whole community, which means a lot of coordination among local, state, and federal agencies and community organizations. Lots of cooperative work has gone into devising this new CONOPS. We reviewed feedback from national, state, and local stakeholders and recommendations from federal advisory committees like the National Biodefense Science Board and the National Commission on Children and Disasters. Then agencies across HHS, like SAMHSA, ACF, and CDC, worked with us to develop and finalize the CONOPS.
The new CONOPS is a living document, so every year we’ll review and revise it to make sure we learn from new and innovative practices and continue to improve. We’d love to hear from you as we move forward.
