Assignment

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Case Study: Sam Sam has been a disaster volunteer for the last 3 years and has served on his local critical incident stress team for a year and a half. In total, he has responded to 12 critical incidents. He has served as a secondary witness to three school shootings, five train and/or car wrecks, three tornadoes, and one hurricane. Sam has seen devastated neighborhoods, grieving survivors, and distraught emergency responders. Sam sought help for himself when he started to experience burnout. He has been seeing a professional for the last several months as a result of what he calls “responder exhaustion.” He doesn’t think he can handle seeing another firefighter break down in tears when recounting his latest effort of carrying a dead body from a burning house while the grieving family members watched, hear another terrorized account from junior high school students who witnessed a classmate shot down in the hall, or see more vacant expressions on mothers who lost their entire homes in a matter of minutes.