NovDev 2007.pmd

S after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, about 10% of Lucille Underwood’s workday as a mental health specialist with the Allegheny County Department of Human Services was spent on issues related to disaster preparation and response. That soon changed. “I can tell you that in the past five years, my job has become 90% disaster preparation and response,” said Underwood, who is assigned to the department’s Office of Behavioral Health. Underwood’s shift in responsibilities underscores a growing recognition of the importance of responding to the behavioral health needs of children and families in the aftermath of large-scale criminal acts and natural disasters that has been spurred by the events of 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and regional floods and other community-wide emergencies. A recently published report on the traumatic experiences of children and families during and after Hurricane Katrina, for example, illustrates the huge, but largely unmet, demand for quickly deployed mental health services in the wake of the storm and concludes with a call for a national disaster plan for children and families. Several years before Katrina, the process was begun in western Pennsylvania and across the state to rewrite emergency response plans to include for the first time protocols for responding to the behavioral health needs of