Posttraumatic Reactions among Firefighters after Critical Incidents: Cross-National Data

Abstract

The presence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and posttraumatic growth (PTG) following a critical incident were examined among firefighters from eight predominantly European countries. A sample of 1916 firefighters completed the Impact of Event Scale–Revised (IES–R) and the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory–Short Form (PTGI–SF) with reference to a critical incident they had experienced. Analyses indicated both negative and positive posttraumatic outcomes could derive from experiencing critical incidents in the line of duty. The analyses also showed country differences exist regarding firefighters’ PTSD symptoms and PTG. It is recommended that future researchers examine factors that could evoke such national differences.

KEYWORDS:

• first responder
• posttraumatic growth
• posttraumatic stress disorder
• trauma

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This article was written by the authors on behalf of the BeSeCu-group. The authors acknowledge the collaboration of their project partners: Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University of Greifswald, Germany (Silke Schmidt, project coordinator, Daniela Knuth, Doris Kehl); Hamburg Fire and Emergency Service Academy, Germany (Frank Seidler and Eberhard Diebe); University of Greenwich, UK (Ed Galea and Lynn Hulse); Institute of Public Security of Catalonia, Spain (Jordi Sans, Malin Roiha, and Lola Valles); Prague Psychiatric Centre, Czech Republic (Marek Preiss, Marie Sotolarova, and Marketa Holubova); MTO Säkerhet AB (MTO Safety AB), Sweden (Lena Kecklund, Sara Petterson, and Kristin Andrée); Main School of Fire Service, Poland (Jerzy Wolanin and Grzegorz Beltowski); Association of Emergency Ambulance Physicians, Turkey (Zeynep Baskaya Sofuoglu and Turhan Sofuoglu); and University of Bologna, Italy (Luca Pietrantoni and Elisa Saccinto) in undertaking this work and in allowing the project findings to be published.