A Call to Action: Responding to Large-Scale Disasters, Catastrophes, and Traumas

The ascendance of large-scale disasters, catastrophes, and traumas as a concentrated focus of academic inquiry in counseling psychology is timely, and this special issue and subsequent investigations represent welcome areas of scholarship. The observations and comments herein salute the authors for responding to a post-Katrina discovery by counseling psychology of the heretofore localized and less than systematic responses to large-scale disasters, catastrophes, and traumas. Extensions to and invited elaborations on the collective observations of this team of authors are offered for consideration. This article also doubles as an invitation to counseling psychologists to put into action programs, procedures, policies, and political advocacy aimed at tapping and sustaining the hope and resilience of national and international communities forced to reconcile sudden and life-changing devastation.