The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals has received additional funding for its Louisiana Spirit Stress Management Program to help survivors of Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, as well as members of the local workforce.
The goal of Louisiana Spirit is to promote a healthy workforce by providing education, group and individual counseling services, and training in self care to help staff manage stress. The federally funded program receives grants from FEMA and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
“We began providing help after Katrina,” Karen Hills, La. Spirit stress management team leader, said. “We teach healthy strategies for stress. A lot of people are not aware of how stress affects them.”
Hills wanted to offer services to Morehouse Parish after hearing of the International Paper’s Bastrop mill closing its doors.
“We offer a variety of stress management services for workers, including stress management and defusing groups, brief individual and ‘walk around’ sessions, and presentations at safety and other meetings on such topics as grief and loss processing, resiliency building, insomnia strategies, developing assertiveness skills, individual coping techniques, working with difficult people, anger management, difficult transitions and other stress management training tailored to meet the needs of specific worksites or individuals,” Hills said. “These services are made available at no charge through a federal grant.”
She said the program is for mental health, but people do not acknowledge that stress can affect their mental and physical health. It can be brought on by health problems, emotional problems, relationship problems, surroundings that make a person feel uncomfortable or fearful, social situations such as poverty, discrimination or loneliness, life cycle transitions like leaving home or getting married or losing a job and belief systems.
According to WebMD, common symptoms of stress include rapid heartbeat, headache, stiff nick and/or tight shoulders, backache, rapid breathing, sweating and sweaty palms and upset stomach, nausea or diarrhea.
Stress can also affect thinking, behavior and/or moods. People may become irritable and intolerant of even minor disturbances, feel irritated or frustrated, losing temper more often, yell at others for no reason, feel jumpy or exhausted all the time, find it hard to concentrate or focus on tasks, worry too much about insignificant things, doubt your ability to do things, imagine negative, worrisome or terrifying scenes and feel you are missing opportunities because of not acting quickly.
Louisiana Spirit’s providers, under the direction of the Office of Mental Health and DHH, offer disaster mental health interventions, which include outreach and education for disaster survivors, their families, local government, rescuers, disaster service workers, business owners, religious groups and other special populations. We also offer free stress management services for employees, public, private and non-profit organizations statewide.
For more information or to schedule time to talk with someone, call Karen Hills at 484-6220.
