What First Responders Teach Us About Cumulative Stress

A firefighter/EMS individual I recently saw reported that he had been on the job since he was 18 years old. He recognized that over time and relatively immediately that his cumulative stress impaired his relationships and ability to relate to others. He was having a challenging time maintaining a long-term intimate relationship because he would waver between being irritable and aggressive and becoming cut off and emotionally distant. He described being one of the first on the scene of two car accidents which I was familiar with where children were sadly killed.

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The Effect of Psychological First Aid Training on Knowledge and Understanding about Psychosocial Support Principles : A Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial

Psychological first aid (PFA) is a world-wide implemented approach to helping people affected by an emergency, disaster, or other adverse event. Controlled evaluations of PFA’s training effects are lacking. We evaluated the effectiveness of a one-day PFA training on the acquisition and retention of knowledge of appropriate responses and skills in the acute aftermath of adversity in Peripheral Health Units (PHUs) in post-Ebola Sierra Leone. Secondary outcomes were professional quality of life, confidence in supporting a distressed person, and professional attitude.

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Trajectories of grief, depression, and posttraumatic stress in disaster‐bereaved people

1 Background

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Crisis leaderschip by mayors an empirical multimethod study

Proefschrift van Tilburg University.

 

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Prevalence of non-specific symptoms in livestock dense areas : looking beyond respiratory conditions

Background: A large body of studies showed that prevalence of respiratory health problems is higher when people live closer to livestock farms, compared to people who live further away. Acute somatic and mental health symptoms such as headache, sleep problems and anxiety can also be directly or indirectly associated with environmental exposures, especially in the light of recent zoonoses with a severe impact on human health.

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Can We Apply the Psychology of Risk Perception to Increase Earthquake Preparation?

Can we encourage people to prepare for a natural disaster by altering the way that scientific information about risk is presented? In assessing the risk posed by a particular hazard, people tend to be guided more strongly by their emotional reactions than by logical or statistical analysis; human beings are driven to protect themselves from risks that that they have actually experienced, that are easy to envision, or that are linked to vivid, concrete images.

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Defining and Operationalizing Disaster Preparedness of Hospitals : A Systematic Review of the Literature

Introduction: Societies invest substantial amounts of resources on disaster preparedness of hospitals. However, the concept is not clearly defined or operationalized in the international literature.

Aim: This study seeks to contribute to the alignment of knowledge of disaster preparedness in hospitals based on a systematic review and analysis of definitions and operationalizations.

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Vulnerability assessment tools for infectious threats and antimicrobial resistance : a scoping review protocol

Introduction: This protocol will guide and explain the working process of a systematic scoping review on vulnerability assessment tools in the field of infectious

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Patients with overlapping diagnoses of asthma and COPD : is livestock exposure a risk factor for comorbidity and coexisting symptoms and infections?

Background: Epidemiological research on health effects of livestock exposure in population subgroups with compromised respiratory health is still limited. The present study explored the association between livestock exposure and comorbid/concurrent conditions in patients with overlapping diagnoses of asthma and COPD.

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The framing of 9/11 in the American, French, and Dutch public spheres (2001 - 2015) A contribution to the sociology of events

In this PhD thesis, I develop an inductive approach to studying events and apply it to the framing of 9/11 in the American, French, and Dutch public spheres, respectively, during the period from 2001 to 2015. By using a mixed methods combination of text analysis techniques, I research public sphere data (primarily national newspapers and legislative speeches) which include references to the Twin Tower attacks.

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