AbstractThis meta-analysis reviewed existing data on the impact of work-related critical incidents in hospital-based health care professionals. Work-related critical incidents may induce post-traumatic stress symptoms or even post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, and depression and may negatively affect health care practitioners’ behaviors toward patients. Nurses and doctors often cope by working part time or switching jobs. Hospital administrators and health care practitioners themselves may underestimate the effects of work-related critical incidents.

Many articles about memory reconsolidation conclude with its therapeutic implications for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A core feature of PTSD is the memory of a traumatic event that is characterized by excessive strength, immalleability, and persistence. We found that Korean and World War II veterans with PTSD showed elevated physiological responses during mental imagery of their personal combat events as long as 40 years later.

The mental and physical health of 146 Dutch males exposed to severe war stress during their young adulthood were examined in 1986-1987 when they were at ages 61 to 66 years. The veterans' data were compared with a randomly selected population-based sample of same-aged males. In 2005, 70% of the war stress veterans had died, and only 35% of the comparison group. The baseline quality of life was significantly poorer in the war stress veterans than in the comparison group. Baseline variables explained 42% of the increased risk of mortality among war stress veterans.

Exile has long been known as a human phenomenon. No matter how young the children are when they leave their native country, it seems that this trauma is something that passes from a generation to another. Exile seems to be the primary trigger of the trauma. The travel across the borders, the distress when leaving their homeland, the daily anguish felt in the host country, with the post traumatic disorder, contribute to the trauma of the exile family. From the study of 52 paintings realized in creative expression workshops have been studied by four families living in exile.