Community Stress First Aid

Illumination Development, L.L.C.

About this app

Community Stress First Aid is a reference for the moment you are sitting with someone who is not doing well and you are not sure what to do next.

It is built around the stress continuum - a four-step scale from Ready, through Reacting and Injured, to Ill. The same four steps run through every screen, so once you can place where someone is, the app tells you what that looks like and what actually helps.

WHAT IS IN IT

- Suicide Intervention - the ACE steps: Ask, Care, Escort. Direct language for asking the question, and what to do once it has been asked.
- Crisis Referral Path - Critical, Urgent, Moderate and Mild, with the right level of response for each.
- Stress Continuum - the model itself, and what each of the four zones means.
- Stress First Aid Model - the Seven Cs: Check, Coordinate, Cover, Calm, Connect, Competence, Confidence.
- Stress Indicators - what Ready, Reacting, Injured and Ill look like in a person, and what they look like in a family.
- Actions To Help - what to do at each zone, written twice: once for individuals and families, once for leaders.
- More Resources - the national lines, with the organisation each one belongs to.

REACHING SOMEONE

Phone numbers and text shortcodes throughout the app are tappable. A number opens your dialler; a text line opens your messaging app; a resource opens in your browser. Nothing is dialled without you tapping it, and the crisis numbers sit on the home screen rather than behind a menu.

The contacts were checked against each organisation's own site, and the date they were last verified is shown at the bottom of the home screen. When a number changes, the app is updated.

IT WORKS WITH NO SIGNAL

Every word of the content ships inside the app. There is no sign-in, no download step and no loading screen - it opens to the material. The app does not hold the INTERNET permission at all, which is also why it cannot phone home.

IT COLLECTS NOTHING

No analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising, no account, no tracking, and nothing stored on your device. The Data safety section says "no data collected" because there is nothing to declare. An app with a suicide-intervention screen is not a place for an advertising SDK.

READABLE

Text scales with your system size setting, including the accessibility sizes, and the layout follows rather than clipping. Two of the original app's reference tables were pictures of words; they are real text now, so they can be enlarged, selected and read aloud by a screen reader. Light and dark themes both ship, and the four zone colours were checked for contrast in each.

WHO IT IS FOR

Service members, veterans, first responders, their families, and the people alongside them. It is written for peer support - for the person helping, as much as the person struggling.

A NOTE ON WHAT THIS IS NOT

This is a reference, not treatment, and not a counsellor. It does not diagnose anything and it is not a substitute for emergency services or professional care. If someone is in immediate danger, call your local emergency number.

Community Stress First Aid has been available since 2011. This version is a complete rewrite: the content was recovered from the original app and carried across in full, the crisis contacts were re-verified and corrected, and the app around them was rebuilt.

What’s new

First release on Google Play, and the first time this has been on Android at all. It has been on iOS since 2011; this is a complete rewrite.

All seven sections in full: Suicide Intervention (ACE), the Crisis Referral Path, the stress continuum, the Seven Cs, stress indicators and actions to help.

Every crisis contact re-verified. The suicide line the old version dialled was retired in 2022; this one dials 988.

Works with no signal. No account, no ads, no analytics, no INTERNET permission.