Caplan, community, and Critical Incident Stress Management.

Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM), a comprehensive crisis intervention program, is examined from the perspective of Community Psychology. Because CISM adheres to the 5 Principles of Community Psychology and was designed to be adopted and implemented as a systematic intervention embedded within an organization, it is argued that CISM is best understood and evaluated in context as a prevention program rather than simply a crisis intervention "treatment." Recommendations are made for evaluating CISM as a comprehensive intervention-using an Action Research framework encompassing methodological pluralism and multiple stakeholders' definitions of success.