Nevada Mental Health & Developmental Services

Over the past year, our Nation has experienced an unprecedented number of disasters…

Dr. Carlos Brandenburg
Division Administrator
—July 2006

I would like to welcome you to our Nevada Division of Mental Health and Developmental Service web site and take this opportunity to highlight the importance of behavioral health services during times of disaster. I'm excited to be able to use this new medium to provide a brief message for our visitors, and I'll try to update every month.

Over the past year, our Nation has experienced an unprecedented number of disasters, including the hurricanes that devastated the Gulf Coast States, other natural disasters and school shootings. These disasters have had an impact on Nevada as well. As a result, we continue to emphasize the importance of all-hazards disaster behavioral health preparedness. In May, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Agency (SAMHSA) sponsored a national summit held in New Orleans, Louisiana. The purpose of this meeting was to review lessons learned from Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma, identify opportunities for consolidation of response planning for behavioral health issues, and strategize all-hazards preparedness efforts for future disasters.

Some of the lessons I learned were:

• Planning begins at the local and state level
• We must anticipate behavioral health needs in evacuation planning
• Need a better system to track victims and identification of their needs
• Need for Special Needs Shelters with support for behavioral health in addition to medical needs
• Staff should be trained to provide psychological first aid, evidence based trauma intervention
• Need to conduct drills and exercises to teach incident command structure
• Creation and coordination of systems for volunteer management and tracking
• Need to take care of staff and responders via stress management and family/personal planning

In Nevada, I believe we are well prepared to address the behavioral health needs of Nevadans during disaster. Our MHDS Disaster Preparedness and Response Program has been in operation since 2004. Currently we have over 300 mental health responders trained to provide psychological first aid during disaster. These responders are tracked and coordinated with an extensive database containing information regarding skills, training, certifications, and emergency contact information that will eventually be combined with a nationwide health care worker database being developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Disaster response plans are in place and are exercised periodically to assure the ability to respond.

The website for this program is: http://mhds.state.nv.us/dpr/index.shtml If more you should need more information about this program, please contact Jeff Whitesides, Statewide Mental Health Disaster Response Coordinator at: jlwhitesides@mhds.nv.gov or (775) 684-5976.

Please take a moment to tour our web site and come back often. Let us know how we can improve our web site. It's our goal to have a web site that meets the needs of our stakeholders and your suggestions will help guide us in this effort.

Welcome again to the Nevada Division of Mental Health & Developmental Services web site, and have a super July, 2006!