Professor appointed to council
By Rachana Dixit, news editor
Posted on April 6, 2006

Lennis Echterling, director of the Counseling Psychology program for the department of graduate psychology, has been appointed to the Terrorism and Disaster Behavioral Health Advisory Council for the Commonwealth of Virginia.

TADBHAC, consisting of 15 members, was formed by the Office of the Governor in 2004 and is meant to provide guidance on Virginia’s key disaster response entities, covering natural disasters as well as terrorist attacks.

“For twenty years I’ve been doing disaster mental health work here in Virginia,” said Echterling, who has been a full-time faculty member at JMU since 1990 and has directed Counseling Psychology since 1994.

When floods ravaged the state in 1985, Echterling helped organize an outreach response to offer supportive counseling of victims of the flood. Here he began working with the state, which was funding the counseling services.

“As counselors, we’re helping people to use their strengths and resources to survive,” Echterling said.

In addition, he has worked as a volunteer at the Pentagon after Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“Mainly what we’re doing is emphasizing the psychological aspect of [natural disasters],” he said. “You have to cognitively come up with a plan of action and behaviorally take it out.”

The main question that needs to be asked, he said, was how to treat people after a natural disaster, since people often do not know how to deal with the stress that is accompanied with the tragedy.

But Echterling’s disaster work is not only limited to this state.  In 1974, when he was studying for his graduate degree and working at a crisis center at Purdue University, massive tornados swept through the state, giving Echterling and others incentive to do community crisis work.

“When this tornado hit and killed eight people in a nearby community,” Echterling said, “We decided ‘here’s a crisis at a community level.’”

He added, “It was the first organized mental response to a natural disaster.”

However, TADBHAC largely deals with the terrorism issue of crisis intervention along with that of natural disasters. Echterling said more components must be addressed when helping victims of these kinds of attacks.

“With terrorism, the other added component is that it’s caused by another human being,” he said. “You’ve got that component of anger.”

In Virginia especially, many areas could be at higher risk for a terrorist attack, or its indirect effects, due to the close proximity of Washington, D.C.

“We may not be directly hit at all,” Echterling said, “But we could be dealing with the consequences of that.”

Currently, Echterling’s work with TADBHAC consists of putting together an emergency preparedness and response booklet for health care providers and the general public, including immediate information on different types of chemical exposures, anthrax and small pox.

He hopes his work with the committee will greatly address the psychological strife of disaster victims and help people rely on one another to find the strength to heal.

 “On July 4 we celebrate Independence Day,” Echterling said, “But I truly believe that all the other days are ones where we can celebrate our interdependence, where we can rely on one another.”