Traumatic Events That Occur At Work

Expert first response personnel make all the difference when it comes to saving lives and property; they realize failure is not an option in today’s highly volatile unforgiving world of disaster. Firefighters, police, military, medical as well as any other national/ international first responder are prime examples of people who give tirelessly all that they have, who work twenty-four hours a day, and who often find themselves hip-deep in blood and guts in order to mitigate the situation. These first response veterans aspire to save that one more life; they strive often even at the emotional expense of poorly kept energy reserves to pull people and property from the disaster, but at what cost? Is first response employees

Ingrid is a social worker, wife, and a mother who lives in a two story colonial home with her husband and two daughters, aged 8 and 15 years old. She was active in the school of her children, serving on committees and volunteering to read in the classroom. She attended to church habitually, though her husband did not accompany her. Her interests included swimming, snorkeling, and hiking. Not only was she close to her immediate family, but also maintained frequent contact with her college friends living throughout the country. As well, Ingrid requires moderate assistance with most of her basic activities of daily living (BADL).

(2007). First Responders: Mental Health Consequences of Natural and Human-Made Disasters for Public Health and Public Safety Workers. Annual Review of Public Health, 28, 55-68. Retrieved from http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.publhealth.28.021406.144037/ Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

If you are injured on the job, you may be eligible for workers' compensation. For a long term injury, you may be eligible for disability, but in either case, it usually ends with this type of payment. However, there are certain situations when you may be able to file a lawsuit because of your injury. The following are four of these possible situations.

This paper will define The Effects of Trauma and Crisis on Clients and Mental Health Counselors and give a brief overview on how these Natural and man-made disasters, crises, and other trauma-causing events have become a focus of the clinical mental health counseling profession. Due to the extreme trauma that children, adolescents and adult experience after a traumatic event it, is noted that most individuals that are exposed to traumatic experience usually develop major depression, generalized anxiety, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) later in

Trauma can range from PTSD to getting lost in the moment. Despite these roadblocks, first responders are capable of using their resources in order to find a way to work through the setbacks that come to them every single day. Ways of coping can variate from keeping tabs on the people involved in the accident to developing a bond with the first response team. Mr. Rodenburg found his own way of coping with difficult situations. Voice dropping to a low tone, he explained, “The sad thing is that on scene, after all is done, we develop a morbid sense of humor that stays on scene and with our members only. We also have a time after any bad situation where we all go back to the station and talk about

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder majorly affects people who have witnessed a shocking, scary, or dangerous event. Any event that involves death, serious injury, threat of death, or violence can be traumatic to a person. PTSD has many side effects, including; dissociation from the self, avoiding feelings, feeling guilt or blame, loss of interest in hobbies, aggressive or reckless behaviour, feeling jittery, and always being alert for danger. Many people suffering from PTSD seek drugs or alcohol to find some relief. Another major symptom of PTSD is experiencing nightmares and flashbacks to an event. A Canadian Veteran describes PTSD in a simple way, “some things you will never unsee” and he states how he often experiences vivid flashbacks of the event (What is PTSD, 2015, September, 23 ). The Canadian Mental Health Association states, “thoughts of the event can seem to come out of nowhere. People often avoid things that remind them of the event” (Canadian Mental Health Association, 2016). Often people avoid driving if the traumatic event was a car crash, or avoid certain tastes or smells that trigger the flashbacks, but what happens when the place you feel the need to avoid, you work in everyday? For first responders all over the country, this is a reality that they have to live through. Due to the nature of their work, first responders are twice as likely to suffer from PTSD than a person working in a different occupation, and because of stigma, they are often too afraid or

This article basically talks about what effect a critical situation has on a person involved in the situation. A paramedic is in a extremely uncomfortable situation, and they are asked to participate in a survey that asks how they feel after the critical incident. Right away it was noticed that paramedics had difficulty describing their feelings and they seemed to be externally oriented thinkers. Meanwhile, this affects a paramedics mental health greatly. A fact from the article stated that 22% paramedics from the surveys were borderline alexithyme, and 13% were in fact alexithyme. Alexithyme is stress disorders and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Paramedics get exposed to critical incidents and get diagnosed with even depression. A paramedic

Sitting in the middle of the floor was a sixteen year old girl who had just finished a basketball game. Usually after games, the girl would sit with the rest of the team to watch the boys play. Instead, the girl walked out of the gym with tears freely falling from her cheeks hoping nobody would notice them. After she had sat down, a few members of the team noticed her absence and went looking for her. The reason the girl didn’t want to be seen with tears was because some others on the team had been experiencing the same thing that she was. What this girl was experiencing was emotional trauma created by her male coach. The

Individuals in public safety, and specifically those employed in the field of law enforcement face a higher risk of experiencing traumatic events or critical incidents than the average citizen (Lansing, Amen, Hanks, & Rudy, 2005). The exposure to these traumatic events sometimes results in the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); onset of PTSD is sometimes delayed and only manifests after exposure to multiple traumatic events (Lansing et al., 2005). Post-traumatic stress disorder is classified as an anxiety disorder, development of which is generally in response to exceptionally terrifying events that often are life threatening to the person or other people, or entail the risk of serious bodily injury (McNally, 2006; Ramage

There has been several psychological and chronic health effects associated with the exposure to the World Trade Center disaster and its repercussion. People who were exposed to fumes, smoke and dust produced during the tragedy and subsequent recovery, clean-up and rescue activities have shown increased risk of respiratory diseases such as asthma (Jordan et al., 2011). Furthermore, psychological trauma as a result of the tragedy is connected with an increased risk of severe psychological distress and post-traumatic disorder. Additionally, individuals who were directly exposed to the disaster are at high risk for pre-mature death as a result of worsening of the prior respiratory disorders and new-onset of respiratory illnesses as well as due to complications brought about by psychological disorders such as substance abuse. Mortality data identifies 790 deaths having occurred between study enrollment and 31st December 2009 (Jordan et al., 2011). There were 156 deaths amongst the rescue and recovery participants while 634 arose from no-recovery and non-rescue participants (Jordan et al., 2011). As of 16th August 2002, a total of 2, 726 deaths certificates had been filed related to World Trade Center attack (CDC, 2002; b).

The key research question for the Waugh’s (2016) study was ‘do crime scene investigators (CSI) experience traumatic event-related stress (ERS) and, if so, how much stress do they experience?’ This question is a combination of two separate questions, the first asking whether CSI’s experience traumatic ERS at all and the second looking at measuring how much stress if any, they experience. This research question was designed to help answer the research topic of whether there is a connection between exposure to traumatic death events and ERS for CSI’s.

Stress is induced by life events .Lazarus and Flokman in (Cavanaugh and Blanchard –Field (2005) point out stress is defined by the person and that no two people experiences stress the same event in exactly the same way. Each individual has a specific tolerance for stress depending on general level of adjustment, the internal and external resources available to that person, flexibility of learned coping mechanisms and the degree and type of stress being experienced .The rise in stress that results from emotional hazardous

Describing a psychological or mental health response following exposure to a traumatic event has become an unachievable goal since there is no response to it. It is apparent that there are individual differences in resilience and risk factors that play a crucial role in response to potentially traumatic event and prevent a description of a response to an event that would affect people uniformly. During the course of a normal life span, most people at different times in their lives are confronted with the adverse events such as the death of a close friend or relative (Kessler, Sonnega, Bromet, Hughes, & Nelson, 1995).

According to Elkin and Rosch (1990) workplace related stress in a major problem in the U.S. and it creates a major expense for corporations. Koeske, Kirk, and Koeske (1993) indicate that all jobs have some level of stress but jobs that are in the human services have additional stressors because they “derive from intense involvement in the lives of others”. (p.319). They also refer to the type of stress experienced by individuals working in human services as “burnout” (Koeske, Kirk, and Koeske, 1993, p.319). Another factor that can influence our stress level is how we handle life’s demands. There are different ways of reacting to the situations we face every day of our lives. We have all heard of expressions such as ‘road rage’ and ‘going postal’. These are terms that we have come to identified with violent reactions to stressors caused by situations all of us face every day. How many of us have experiences in the road that