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BOOKLET to Provide Basic Information Regarding Health Effects of Radiation (3rd edition)

Support for Helpers: Three Stages of Care

Support for Helpers: Three Stages of Care_Figure

Support service providers to affected people, such as civil servants and medical personnel, are often in positions to closely witness the agony of the affected people and tend to feel helpless or guilty as no immediate solutions are available.

To provide psychological care to them, support within respective organizations they belong to is the most important and such support would help maintain the stability and constancy of the organizations. However, in Fukushima Prefecture, issues to be handled are too wide-ranging, long-term, and complex to find goals or processes for their solutions, so it is difficult to provide support solely by respective organizations.

It is important for such helpers to care for themselves by being aware of their difficult situation and trying to relieve stress by themselves in the first place. Secondly, it is also important for superiors, management or coworkers to detect any problematic symptoms at an early stage and provide care within respective organizations. Furthermore, establishing a specialized unit outside the organization that offers support would be one option. In order to construct such a support system, psychological education and awareness-raising activities targeting managers (also for their own sake) would be very important.

Fukushima Prefecture and the government are providing support for psychological care to the affected people directly and indirectly through psychological care support projects for the affected people, etc.
(Related to p.155 of Vol. 1, "Stress Measures for Helpers")

  • Included in this reference material on March 31, 2016
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