Occupational Safety and Health Administration on Personal Alarms

I had a very interesting conversation this afternoon with a director from OSHA from one of our largest States.  There's a growing awareness of the benefits of "arming" mental health staff with personal alarms.  As he and I talked about the strategy behind the use of carrying a personal alarm, I thought it might be valuable information to share with you and preserve here on the blog.

• Carrying this alarm should make you more vigilant.  Get in the habit of practicing increased situational awareness
• Pull the plastic tab and discard it.  Test the alarm for 1 second by pulling the pin and quickly replacing it so that you understand what it sounds like.

·      Carrying this Vigilant alarm has two intended benefits in the event of an emergency:

1. Obviously, it gets the attention of anyone in the immediate vicinity
2. More importantly, it disrupts the thought process of the potential assailant.  They don’t know what it is, and they don’t know how to stop it.  All they know is something unexpected just happened, introducing the element of surprise to your side and buying you a critical 10-15 seconds for you to act

Never feel apologetic if you are ever in a situation that causes you to pull the pin.  You may never know what the results might have been had you not taken action.