The short term effectiveness of critical incident stress debriefing

Abstract

The aim of the study was to evaluate the immediate impact of Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD) on people who had recently experienced a stressful event. Post traumatic symptoms were evaluated with the Impact of Events Scale (IES) before CISD and again six weeks later and were compared to those of controls and a group who had received a brief psychoeducational intervention, who were evaluated within the same time frame. Compared with controls, significant effects for the CISD condition and a brief psychoeducational intervention were observed on the intrusions and total scales of the IES. CISD is effective in the short-term in reducing post-traumatic stress symptomatology, notably intrusive memories, following a critical incident. However CISD is no more effective than a brief psychoeducational intervention. CISD does not increase post traumatic stress symptomatology.