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.

Secondary traumatic stress in fire fighters because of the interaction with the victims.

Abstract 

Generally, when any type of disaster or catastrophe occurs, be it of natural or human origin, there is much talk about the number of victims and deaths, the magnitude of infrastructure and material goods affected, the economic amounts lost in the event, etc. In the same way, much has been said and written about the psychological impact on victims and the community exposed to such an event. However, there is a type of hidden victims that, in many cases, tend to go unnoticed, perhaps in part because of their resistance to accepting that they are also vulnerable. I am referring to the members of the first response teams in emergencies (fire, police, health, etc.). The presence of the scene, the proximity to the deadly victims and the interaction with the survivors, as well as the work in highly toxic atmospheres or of great risk for the physical integrity, together with problems of organizational, familiar or interpersonal type, will exert a strong impact on these troops, with possible repercussions on their physical and mental health. Moreover, they can be factors of vulnerability to suffer more or less severe episodes of Acute Stress, Post Traumatic Stress and Secondary Traumatic Stress, among others. In the present work an approximation is made to the Secondary Traumatic Stress (STS) construct, a type of emerging labor condition in the professionals who develop their tasks of help and rescue with people exposed to critical incidents or vital events, as is the case of the Firefighter Departments. Factors such as the history of personal traumas, the organizational context, the characteristics of the intervention and the individual personality, will significantly condition the capacity of resistance to the traumas in the professionals of the Fire Services. 

Key notes: emotional trauma, secondary traumatic stress, resistant personality, firefighter, critical incident.

4^th International Conference on Depression, Anxiety and Stress Management

Cita:  Senabre, J. (2018). Secondary traumatic stress in fire fighters because of the interaction with the victims. In Journal of Depression and Anxiety 2018, Volume 7, pp 69-70. DOI: 10.4172/2167-1044-C1-005  ISSN: 2167-1044

 https://www.omicsonline.org/proceedings/secondary-traumatic-stress-in-fire-fighters-because-of-the-interaction-with-the-victims-85539.html

 https://www.omicsonline.org/conference-proceedings/2167-1044-C1-005-016.pdf