Preparing for Emergencies and Catastrophes

The link didn't show up for the Red Cross. Here it is…

@Holly_Scope I hope this thread will help others, but at the very least I hope it gives me the push needed to get my emergency measures in place.

I look at all these online emergency kit ideas and my eyes just gloss over and my brain goes into traffic jam mode. Just the thought of an emergency causes me to short circuit because of anxiety and being overwhelmed. And these lists I find are just too much to absorb. So I went to various sites to see if they have suggestions for people with mental illness who want to set up emergency measures. I looked at the WHO, the EU, the Red Cross, the Mental Health Foundation and more. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I looked if there was information for this year's focus of mental health in emergencies. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. What they have is a whole lot of proof that emergencies are particularly difficult for people with mental health issues and that emergencies can even cause mental health issues even in people who never had such problems. There are also a lot of ideas about how to deal with people during an emergency and after an emergency. There are also a lot of ideas of how to coordinate services during and after emergencies. But what about what we're talking about here, which is improving our mental health now by putting in measures now and by improving our mental health in the future by putting in measures now to lessen the crisis? Nothing. Not that I could find anyway. This isn't my first rodeo with ass-backwards approaches to mental health. The idea of an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure applies to mental health too - not just physical health. Anyway. Grrr.

Through experience, I believe very much in this approach of doing something now in the hopes of preventing crisis, or minimising crisis, or even just believing I just might soften a future blow. Unfortunately I can't find how to approach this emergency kit setup without short circuiting, so I've decided to just keep going from where I'm at, and hope for clarity as the steps unfold. Or maybe someone else here has an idea of how to approach this?

Step one was like you describe, @Catherine21 , which is to just buy a bunch of emergency supplies off the top of my head. I actually even bought a little generator. I did that after the flood and blackout earlier this year. I'll post what I bought in my next post, and discuss them. Then I did a contacts list recently, after @Holly_Scope announced World Mental Health Day. I totally love that list as it gives me such peace of mind. It includes friends, family, professionals (plumber, handyman, etc), crisis lines and emergency services. I taped it on the insides of my kitchen cupboards, and it gives me such relief every time I open the cupboards. I sent a copy to my sister and brother. I put a printed copy in my purse to have with me at all times. Again, that's such a comfort to have on me when out and about.

That's it for now. Later!

@Chris75 _ you bring up a good point – how much of catastrophe are we planning for here? Not such a big one as nuclear winter, no. LOL! And I too hope not to survive to experience that. Sheesh! I don't think any individual can really prepare for that. I'm talking about things we're experiencing now and in the recent past, like COVID lockdowns, fires in the region, power grid failures, floods, and stuff like that. But of course people can prepare for whatever they want.

@Catherine21 it sounds like you're planning for a long time. How long are you thinking? The EU recommends three days. I think that's too little, so I'm aiming for one week.

So moving forward with the list....

THERE IS NO ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL PREPARATION: From what I see, there is no one emergency preparedness that will fit everyone because we all live differently. Everywhere I looked online had different ideas as to how to prepare. So @Catherine21 a flood to you is a different emergency than a flood to me.

PREPARING FROM THE ANGLE OF DISABILITIES: In preparing for emergencies, we all come from different angles. My main angle is from the perspective of someone with psychiatric and physical disabilities. Another person's disability would possibly require a different preparation.

EMERGENCIES ARE TRANSLATED INTO PROBLEMS: Because of my anxiety and dissociation, I need to break down the emergency situations into smaller pieces. When I look at the list of emergencies that I posted earlier, I see that different emergencies bring up different problems, and there are some problems that overlap. So I went through all the emergencies and did a list of all the potential problems in the different emergencies.

PHASES TO PREPAREDNESS: I organised that list of problems into six groups of related problems. Each problem group is a phase in preparing for emergencies. So there are six phases to preparation. I have organised the phases from easiest and/or most urgent, to most difficult and/or least urgent. This order is of course subjective; I'm organising it according to my perspective. For example, I am starting with emergencies in which I can stay at home, leading up to evacuation.

ENCOURAGE OTHERS TO PREPARE: The idea of me doing this list is to, first of all do my own preparedness of course, and second of all hopefully encourage others to do theirs. My preparedness falls apart if no one around me is prepared because their emergency becomes my emergency. Like the example you suggest @Catherine21 of people trying to break into your apartment to get your supplies. If we all prepare a little, all emergencies become less of an emergency.

OPTIONAL ACTIVITY: Each phase will have an optional activity.

So I think the best approach is to provide a thread for each phase, and post the links here to those phases. I will only post one phase at a time so as to keep focused. Phase One is called The Foundation, and the thread is here: