Some Legitimate Observations About "Crisis Counselors"

I've often wondered if these therapeutic rescuers might be driven by unrecognized wishes to play the hero in post-trauma dramas. In these scenarios, the objects of rescue are enlisted to play the sick role. Some will need help, but being pushed into the sick role isn't good.

I've had similar doubts about huge school events and the deployment of armies of grief counselors when a student dies. Kids who didn't even know the deceased end up cast in the role of distraught mourner.

Wakes and funerals already exist to serve the immediate needs for mourning and recognition of the loss. Participation in normalizing rituals is probably far more helpful than therapy in the immediate aftermath of such a loss.
 

This is why it's called "trauma tourism"; from time to time I've found the practice creepy and weird.  Also, all it takes to shut down the whole "crisis counsel" experience is to ask a secularized therapist, "What happens when you die?  Where do you go?"  If the counselor is a person of faith, they are constrained from answering by law; if they are non-theistic, then their role in the grief process is worthless.