The Community Stress Prevention Centre (CSPC) was established almost 30 years ago by Professor Mooli Lahad in the town of Kiryat Shmona, on Israel's Lebanese border, with the aim of supporting the population on the frontline of shelling by addressing the consequences of prolonged exposure to terror. In the past three decades, CSPC has provided over 120,000 hours of training and more than 17,000 hours of direct treatment for patients with psychotraumatic symptoms, and trained over 300 local authorities in Israel and abroad in the treatment. Consultation and research: CSPC provides disaster management consultation and training along with academic research, ranging from preparedness activities through "real-time" intervention and postincident recovery and treatment of both children and families. CSPC has a long history of developing programs in conjunction with local authorities and community services as well as with the Israeli Ministries of Welfare, Education and National Insurance. CSPC has provided crisis management and intervention and mental health training for both professionals and paraprofessionals, along with a wide range of community resiliency activities, in Europe, Turkey, the Middle East and Asia
Post-disaster training: CSPC's involvement in post-disaster training started in the former Yugoslav war (1992-1995) working in conjunction with UNICEF and UKJAID, conducting psychosocial training for teams of psychologists, psychiatrists, community workers, social workers and educationalists from Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia during and after the war. In 1999, we worked with JDC and local organizations in Turkey, following the earthquake, where the train-the-trainer cascade model was utilized in training twenty initial trainers, who in turn trained an additional twenty people each, all of whom were able to train others to provide assistance to the many tens of thousands of bereaved, injured and homeless individuals. In 2004, following the Beslan school massacre, CSPC along with the American Joint Distribution Committee and other Israel Trauma Coalition organizations, sent a team of trauma specialists to Ossetia, where seminars were conducted to train staff in psycho-education methods to be utilized within the school system. The team also provided individual and group treatment interventions to families and individuals—primarily children, following this incident, in the aftermath of thethe tsunami in 2004 in Sri Lanka (for 2.5 years),in the US following Katrina (from 2006-2010) and in 2010 in Haiti following the earthquake. Cross-cultural work: Our cross-cultural work with a variety of communities and faiths in Israel, spread over 30 years, has included immigrants groups from the former USSR and Ethiopia, ultra-orthodox Jews, Moslems, Christian Bedouins and Druze communities. CSPC has been the leader of a consortium of experts who designed five community resiliency centers in the south of Israel since 2007. We have the knowledge and experience to revise and adjust it to the specific local characteristics. Research Center: CSPC serves as the Tel Hai College Research Center for Social Sciences and Humanities. Its research team, led by Professor Lahad, has published articles and books dealing with the psychosocial aspects of disaster and crisis management, developed the coping model of BASIC Ph and the treatment method of SEE FAR CBT and has conducted several academic and professional seminars and workshops in Israel as well as Europe. Between 2007 and 2009, CSPC conducted a large project, funded by the NATO Science for Peace program, for psychosocial professionals from Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia in order to train and empower them to deal with disaster situations and to jointly build, , virtual resiliency centers for their respective countries via the internet.
