Critical incidents are sudden, unexpected, often life-threatening time-limited events that can inhibit an individual’s capacity to respond adaptively. The impact of critical incidents may be debilitating and stems from recurrent intrusive images, persistent fear, displaced anger, guilt, and isolation. Extreme critical incident stressors can even result in personal crises, traumatic stress, and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Critical Incident Stress Response (CISR) refers to an integrated comprehensive, multicomponent, crisis intervention approach for addressing the psychological aftermath of critical incidents. Over the past 25 years a general model of CISR group debriefing has been developed and which can be used to accelerate recovery from traumatic workplace events. CISR can accomplish psychological closure, prevention, and mitigation of traumatic stress, and promote return to normalcy, benefiting the individual, organization, and the community at large.

CISR services have become popular in the United States (Burton, Gorter, & Paul, 2009), the United Kingdom (Regel, 2007) and in many other countries around the world (Mitchell, 2004). CISR services have been provided in a wide variety of occupational contexts, including firefighters (Mulligan, 2001), medical staff (Flannery, 2001), bank personnel (Miller-Burke, Attridge, & Fass, 1999), and for natural disasters (Attridge, Bergmark & Parker, 2002; Vineburgh et al., 2006). CISR services are often included as part of employee assistance programs (EAPs; VandePol, Gist, Braverman, & Labardee, 2006; VandePol & Gilmour, 2008). EAP services are now widely available to over 90% of large size companies in the US and the majority of all employers in the US and Canada (SHRM, 2008; Csiernik, 2002) and thus CISR services are now available, if needed, to millions of workers.

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