Get mind prepared for bushfire season
It’s important for Australians to be mentally prepared as well as physically ready as the country faces a potentially severe bushfire season and a long, dry summer, according to the Australian Psychological Society (APS).
“The advice for people in fire risk situations tends to focus on practical preparation such as how to secure our homes and property and working out firefighting or evacuation plans, all of which are highly desirable,” says APS Director, Dr Bob Montgomery. “But the repeated experience has been that many people will do few or even none of those practical preparations, until it is almost too late. We have a good understanding of the psychological barrier to that practical preparation.
“To undertake those preparations is to admit to yourself that you are at risk and for many people that is too anxiety-provoking. So they stick to the anti-anxiety belief most of us learned in childhood: bad things do happen, but to someone else. When disaster does strike, these people are ill-prepared and more at risk of panic and then doing something that increases their risks.”
Dr Montgomery said that preparing for the possibility of fire, hearing warnings of risk days, dealing with the reality of a disaster, and picking up the pieces afterwards, were all stressful situations. People would cope with that stress and those situations better if they took steps to manage their inevitable anxiety at each point.
Tips for preparing for emergency situations included checking the warning messages and getting facts, completing a personal disaster plan, and controlling individual feelings by being positive and not thinking about the worst possible outcomes.
