The Shreveport Fire Department has been involved with Critical Incident Stress Management since 1988. In that time, our team has been called upon hundreds of times to provide debriefings, defusing, and crisis interventions both locally and nationally. Among these are line-of-duty deaths, death/injury to children, mass casualty incidents, and various traumatic incidents. Large scale events have included the Oklahoma bombing, Hurricane Andrew, and several local tornado disasters.

Critical Incident Stress can be most simply defined as s syndrome in which an emergency service worker responds to serious events, and is unable to cope with what he or she experiences at the scene, hours, days, or even weeks later. An emergency worker, no matter how directly involved, no matter what age, regardless of the level of experience, can suffer. In fact, 87% of all police, firefighters, emergency nurses, and doctors suffer from the effects of Critical Incident Stress during their careers.

In the history of Critical Incident Stress there were four major influences, which set the foundation for Critical Incident Stress Management, that can be identified. They are:

* Warfare
* Disasters
* Law Enforcement Psychology
* Emergency medical, fire, and hospital services.

Stress has been part of the human experience since the very beginning of time. No one would survive without it. At best, it is a creative, driving force, which can drive people to survive; to find great happiness and achieve incredible accomplishments. At worst, it is a destructive force, which can deprive people of joy, health, sanity, relationships with others, and even life itself.