Firefighters commonly encounter traumatic events during duty hours. The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics of duty-related trauma as risk factors for posttraumatic stress disorder in professional firefighters. A sample of 212 firefighters participated in the study and completed self-reported questionnaires. Potentially traumatic events (PTE) were assessed using a list of 17 traumatic event types. The posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) were measured by the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (Lim et al., 2009; Weiss, 2007). A higher score for the composite index, which reflects both multiple PTE and peritraumatic suffering, increased the odds for significant PTSS after adjusting for age, sex, marital status, education, numbers of years worked, childhood trauma, and depressive symptoms (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] = 2.26, p = .001, Cohen's d = 0.20). Furthermore, indirect (AOR = 1.93, p = .009, Cohen's d = .16) and colleague-related PTE (AOR = 1.97, p = .037, Cohen's d = .16) showed significant associations with PTSS. It is noteworthy that the combination of multiple PTE and peritraumatic suffering was more predictive of PTSS than either factor alone. Our findings also suggest that daily work exposure to indirect PTE may contribute to the occurrence of PTSS among professional firefighters.

Background: This study aims to test the effectiveness of a camp program and to analyze the factors related to stress relief. To this end, the present study conducted prospective research for six months on the change of stress, depression, and the level of post-traumatic stress among the firefighters who participated in the camp program. Methods: The perceived stress (PSS-K), stress by the different portion (GARS), post-traumatic stress symptoms (IES-R) and depression (BDI-II) were evaluated at five sessions over the span of six months, and the change of each measure was analyzed. Those five sessions were before the camp, right after the camp and a month, three months and six months after the camp. Moreover, this study assessed characteristics of sociodemographic, firefighting task and mental health that are related to the level of stress at six months after the camp. Results: Compared with before the camp, the level of depression was significantly lower right after the camp. However, the level did not have significant difference after a month period. At one month after the camp, the level of stress was significantly lower than before the camp, and was maintained after six months. The predictive factors of the degree of stress relief after the camp were high job stress and low disease stress. Conclusions: This study has found that the stress relief from the camp continued until six months after the camp, and the stress-relieving effect through the camp was substantial for those with higher job stress and lower disease stress.