At the same time, the WMH results were sufficiently consistent with prior evidence that one could imagine a triage screening system being developed that was based loosely on these consistent risk factors. This is the approach taken in the PsySTART system recently adopted by the American Red Cross to target rapid delivery of psychological first aid and referral for mental health services to disaster survivors judged to be at high risk of post-disaster mental disorders in the immediate aftermath of a disaster (Schreiber et al. 2014). PsySTART is different from previous post-disaster risk evaluation schemes in that it does not focus on current psychological distress (other than acute suicidality), which is an unreliable predictor of post-disaster mental disorders (Norris et al. 2002), but on evidence-based predictors of those disorders (disaster-related experiences, prior disaster exposure, prior trauma exposure, and history of prior mental disorders) evaluated by trained Red Cross disaster mental health workers.
