Fourteen Years Later: Hobfoll and Colleagues Five Principles of Psychological First Aid through the Lens of the COVID-19 Global Pandemic.

Abstract

Fourteen years ago, Hobfoll and colleagues published a seminal article in the disaster psychiatry literature, “Five Essential Elements of Immediate and Mid-Term Mass Trauma Intervention: Empirical Evidence” (Hobfoll et al., 2007). This expert consensus’ five essential elements, which came to be known as the principles of Psychological First Aid (PFA) include promoting a sense of safety, calming, selfand community efficacy, connectedness, and hope. The elements of PFA were conceived at a time when the world was recovering from major disaster events including the 9–11 attacks, the South Asian tsunami of 2004, and Hurricane Katrina. Since its publication, the pace of disaster response has only increased. Mass shootings in Paris and Las Vegas, the Haiti and Great Japan Earthquakes, and the COVID-19 pandemic are extreme examples that illustrate the need for a coherent framework for disaster responders to approach the distress and illness that inevitably follow. As an evidence-informed framework of intervention, PFA has been a component of the disaster response to all these events. PFA frameworks are the standard of acute mental health intervention following disaster for the American and International Red Cross, the World Health Organization, and countless non-governmental and municipal organizations around the world. PFA has been