Mental health issues of fire personnel: an exploratory study

Abstract

The primary goal of the current study was to add to the literature regarding mental health implications of fire service membership. In the present study, 100 fire personnel were selected working in Haryana state of India. The DSM V cross cutting Questionnaire was used to assess mental health issues of the fire personnel and the results suggested that firefighters self-reported greater posttraumatic symptomatology on anger and substance issue domain of the test. In addition, the firefighters reported more distress on several subscales of the DSM V cross cutting Questionnaire

Mental health and post-traumatic stress disorder in firefighters: an integrated analysis from an action research study

“…More particularly, in our study, the 12 firefighters with probable PTSD seem to have more pronounced mean levels of depression and hostility in contrast to participants without probable PTSD (still, paranoid ideation was the dimension with a higher score for both groups). These results are not surprising since Sindhu et al (2020) postulated that rates of PTSD and depression in firefighters and other rescue workforces are higher than in the general population, and their study with 100 Indian firefighters found higher levels of substance issues, anger, and sleep problems, followed immediately by depression. Similar results evidencing depressive symptoms among firefighters were found across studies, for example, in Australian (e.g., Harvey et al, 2016), Chinese (Sun et al, 2020), Greek (Psarros et al, 2018), and U.S. samples (Stanley et al, 2017).…”

“…Interestingly, these results are in line with the case study analyzed in Becker et al's (2022) study as the two Portuguese firefighters studied (male and female, volunteer and career firefighters, respectively) scored higher in those two dimensions of the BSI at baseline. Furthermore, as cited by Sindhu et al (2020), in 1990, Mitchell evidenced 12 characteristics of personality among emergency service workers (including firefighters) that can contribute to cumulative stress, for example, a need to be in control, obsessive perfectionism, and other compulsive behaviors. Psarros et al (2018) found that the perception of fear of imminent death during critical firefighting operations and neuroticism may precipitate the development of PTSD in these workers.…”

“…Related complications include intrusive memories (Fullerton et al, 1992 ; Clohessy and Ehlers, 1999 ; Vara and Queirós, 2018 ), suicidal ideation (Carpenter et al, 2015 ), suicidal behaviors (Stanley et al, 2015 ), and stress-related issues, including symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (e.g., Del Ben et al, 2006 ; Carvalho and Maia, 2009b ; Berger et al, 2012 ; Salleh et al, 2020 ; Sindhu et al, 2020 ) and peritraumatic symptoms (Marcelino et al, 2012 ). Biologically associated problems include physical complaints (Fullerton et al, 1992 ; Carvalho and Maia, 2009a ; Marcelino et al, 2012 ), psychosomatic manifestations (Wagner et al, 1998 ), and elevated risk for cardiovascular events, diabetes, or altered immune response (Sindhu et al, 2020 ). In this regard, the study conducted by Marmar et al ( 1996 ) emphasized the importance of studying the psychobiological effects of daily operations in addition to large-scale, critical events.…”

“…The most common negative mental health outcomes found in this population include emotional exhaustion (Afonso et al, 2019), sleep issues (Fullerton et al, 1992;Haslam and Mallon, 2003;Harvey et al, 2016;Frost et al, 2021), diminished attention, alertness, and cognitive performance (Sindhu et al, 2020), social dysfunction (Wagner et al, 1998), substance abuse Harvey et al, 2016;Sindhu et al, 2020), anxiety (Sindhu et al, 2020;Wagner et al, 2021b), depression (Harvey et al, 2016;Salleh et al, 2020;Sindhu et al, 2020;Wagner et al, 2021b), and other psychopathological symptoms (Heinrichs et al, 2005;Wagner et al, 2010Wagner et al, , 2021a. Related complications include intrusive memories (Fullerton et al, 1992;Clohessy and Ehlers, 1999;Vara and Queirós, 2018), suicidal ideation (Carpenter et al, 2015), suicidal behaviors (Stanley et al, 2015), and stress-related issues, including symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (e.g., Del Ben et al, 2006;Carvalho and Maia, 2009b;Berger et al, 2012;Salleh et al, 2020;Sindhu et al, 2020) and peritraumatic symptoms . Biologically associated problems include physical complaints (Fullerton et al, 1992;Carvalho and Maia, 2009a;, psychosomatic manifestations (Wagner et al, 1998), and elevated risk for cardiovascular events, diabetes, or altered immune response (Sindhu et al, 2020).…”