Contact: Sammy McDavid
STARKVILLE, Miss.--A nationally recognized authority on skills essential to cope with the aftermath of natural disasters will lead three public programs next week at Mississippi State.
"Self-Care for Disaster Response Workers and Caregivers" is the title of daylong workshop presentations to be given Wednesday-Friday [Oct. 22-24] by psychologist Gargi Roysircar-Sodowsky. Her visit is sponsored by the university's Student Counseling Services, in cooperation with the American Red Cross and Foundation for the Mid South.
All taking place 9 a.m.-4 p.m. in the Colvard Student Union, the sessions and their locations include:
--Wednesday [the 22nd], the second-floor Whittington Board Room;
--Thursday, Room 324; and
--Friday, Whittington Board Room.
Though designed primarily for emergency-response workers, the programs are free and open to all. Registration is required, however.
Roysircar-Sodowsky is a faculty member at New Hampshire's Antioch University New England and founding director of its Multicultural Center for Research and Practice. In addition to self-care of disaster-response workers, her career has focused on educating volunteers in disaster trauma, compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, and other related conditions.
She also has led students in researching the effects of trauma on 9/11 responders and political refugees. The work has included situations resulting from the 2004 Indian tsunami and 2005 hurricanes Katrina and Rita, as well as HIV/AIDS-infected and affected women and children in Africa.
To register or obtain more information on the workshops, contact Kara Hodges at 662-325-2091 or kh349@saffairs.msstate.edu.
For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.