ORIGINAL PAPER Service Characteristics and Counseling Outcomes: Lessons from a Cross-Site Evaluation of Crisis Counseling After Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma

Abstract The 2005 hurricane season was the worst on record, resulting in disaster declarations and the imple-mentation of federally-funded crisis counseling programs in five states. As part of a larger cross-site evaluation of these programs, data from 2,850 participant surveys, 805 provider surveys, and 132,733 encounter logs (submitted from 3 weeks before to 3 weeks after the participant sur-veys) were aggregated to the county level (N = 50) and used to test hypotheses regarding factors that influence program performance. County-level outcomes (aggregate ratings of participants ’ perceived benefits) improved as service intensity, service intimacy, and frequency of psy-chological referrals increased and as provider job stress decreased. The percent of providers with advanced degrees was indirectly related to participants ’ perceived benefits by increasing service intensity and referral frequency. The results yielded recommendations for achieving excellence in disaster mental health programs