Effectiveness on Mental Health of Psychological Debriefing for Crisis Intervention in Schools

The purpose of this paper is to provide a summary of evidence for the effectiveness and safety of commonly used crisis interventions in schools, such as critical incident stress debriefing (CISD), critical incident stress management (CISM), and psychological debriefing (PD). Two researchers independently searched relevant databases for reviews and meta-analyses in English language peer-reviewed journals using identified keywords. The database search was supplemented by hand searches of the reference lists of database-identified reviews. Selected reviews were compared and analyzed for the effectiveness of CISD/CISM/PD interventions. Research findings suggest that these interventions are ineffective and may be harmful. Evidence of effectiveness of CISD/CISM/PD interventions in schools is very limited. Given evidence of ineffectiveness and potential harm of CISD/CISM/PD interventions in adults and limited evidence of these interventions in schools, there is no compelling reason to implement CISD/CISM/PD following crisis events in schools.