During our meeting at the APA Convention in San Francisco, we elected officers of our group.The are:

Action Alert: Responding to the Terror Tragedy

The American Red Cross is asking mental health professionals trained in Disaster Mental Health Services to contact their local Red Cross Chapter or their State Lead Chapter for Disaster to let them know of your availability - either to travel to the site or to provide services in your home community.

Similarly, APA is asking psychologists to contact the Disaster Response Network of their State, Provincial, or Commonwealth Psychological Association to let them know of your availability.

The ARC in working with families of those on board the aircraft will try to find mental health professionals across the nation to make referrals to in home communities. This is for some minimum number of pro bono sessions.

Not everyone can help right away, but this is not going to be simply a short term crisis intervention.

There are many thousands of survivors - Those who escaped the buildings attacked and surrounding those attacked, who witnessed the events, who have been part of the rescue and recovery teams, those who watched on TV, etc. Our institute is getting calls from all over the country from home town newspapers asking if it is normal for people to be experiencing some level of traumatic response even though residents only watched it on TV. It would be great if local ARC chapters and DRN units had folks locally who could handle that and show the local mental health resources that are in communities across the country. They need to know about you all out there.

Our primary organizational activity is the collection of 796 signatures of APA Members, Fellows and Voting Associates in order to make our vision a reality. Download a copy of the petition here, and get it signed by all of your colleagues and friends who are members of APA and interested in any aspect of the topic of trauma. Take copies of the petition to any venue where psychologists can be found (for instance, your local or state psychological association, your university department). Unfortunately, student signatures are not valid for the petition process.

We've added a new link button, Doings, to this site. It's a place where Trauma Interest Group members can tell us what they're doing and the links to find out more. If you've got a book, workshop, or other activities of interest to TIG folks, please let your web maven know so she can add this information to the page.

We invite you to join our group! You can contact our membership co-chair, Catherine Hansen, to get on the emailing list for our upcoming electronically published newsletter, or to volunteer to get involved in any aspect of our group. You can download a copy of our by-laws to see what options for activity will be available once the division is up and running.