The experience of trauma in forest firefighters through indirect exposure.

Jaime Senabre

Director of SINIF.
University of Alicante, Spain.

One of the characteristics of work in the extinction of forest fires is the exposure of forest firefighters to situations that require a great demand of personal resources, both physical and psychological, which is an important source of stress for these professionals. On occasion, forest firefighters face critical situations that can be a traumatic experience capable of generating deep discomfort, both individually and collectively. This type of negative events can cause invisible emotional scars, difficult to erase and complex approach. Now, we know that an inadequate management of empathy towards victims can facilitate the initiation of a process of secondary traumatic stress in firefighters, due to emotional contagion. This paper deals with indirect exposure to trauma through the indiscriminate consumption of images and traumatic stories offered by the media (press and TV) or social networks. Our research team was able to observe how Forest Fire Brigades, which participated as Control Group in a study on emotional impact in forest firefighters after a forest fire in Spain with fatalities, manifested post-traumatic symptomatology, almost at the same level as those firefighters who participated directly in the works of extinction of that fire. The conclusions indicate that indirect exposure to trauma, uncontrolled empathy towards victims, and social or professional identification with victims may have (both in emergency professionals and in the general population) emotional consequences, similar to those produced in the direct victims of the fire, as well as a latent predisposition to manifest maladaptive behaviors before similar situations or that remember the lived experience.Finally, guidelines are offered on "what to do" to avoid emotional contagion due to indirect exposure to trauma, such as, for example, a dosed and unrepeated consumption of news and images with a heavy dramatic load.

 ScientificTracks Abstracts: J Psychol Psychother

 Citation: Senabre, J. (2018). The experience of trauma in forest firefighters through indirect exposure. Journal of Psychology & Psychotherapy. ISSN: 2161-0487. Volume 8. World Summit on Stress, Mindfulness and Philosophy. Boston, USA. Book of abstracts. pp52. DOI: 10.4172/2161-0487-C4-032

World Summit on Stress, Mindfulness and Philosophy. August 27-28, 2018 | Boston, USA.