Effective Mental Health Response to Catastrophic Events

This article describes how a mental health disaster response plan, which resulted from a collaborative effort between the Arkansas Department of Health and the Arkansas Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, was used successfully to meet the needs of more than 1,000 displaced survivors of Hurricane Katrina. Included is a discussion of how the components of established disaster response protocols can be integrated with evolving theory on the psychological effect of catastrophic events on micro-, mezzo-, and macro-level systems to advance the field of disaster mental health response.