Good Practices of End of Deployment Debriefing in the Royal Netherlands Navy
Abstract
Practices in early psychological interventions after critical incidents have been the focus of research for several years now. In an article in The Lancet in 2002, it was concluded on the basis of seven international studies that individual single session debriefing does not lead to a decline in the incidence of Post Traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD) among the victims of accidents or traumatic events. At the international level, it was recommended that the term "debriefing" should be replaced by the term "early intervention", and that a stop should be put to the debriefing of victims of shocking events. The debate about early interventions in the Netherlands Armed Forces continued in 2004 in the memorandum to the State Secretary for Defense from the former Inspector-General of the Armed Forces. The Ombudsman of the Canadian Armed Forces suggested in 2004 a policy on End of Deployment Debriefings in his memorandum on Third Location Decompression, in which redeploying troops stay together on the transit home in a safe place to share experiences and expectations. In 2004 the Royal Navy rolled out their Risk Management approach in operational units of the Royal Marines, in which they assess the risk for the development of adaptation problems after redeployments. It appeared that more than 90 percent of the American soldiers, who were wounded in Iraq and were recovering in the American Fleet Hospital Eight in Spain, rated their debriefing in this hospital helpful or very helpful. In this paper we present the data of research of satisfaction of military personnel with recent group-wise End of Deployment Debriefing in the Royal Netherlands Navy and the Royal Netherlands Marine Corps.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 01, 2006
- Accession Number
- ADA472742
Entities
People
- Marten Meijer
- Rodney De Vries
Organizations
- NATO Science and Technology Organization