Incident stress
[2] Symptomatology associated with excessive acute or sustained stress may include cognitive impairments such as diminished memory, decision-making capacity, and attention span; emotional reactions such as anger, irritability, guilt, fear, paranoia, and depression; and physical problems ranging from fatigue, dizziness, migraine headaches, and high blood pressure to diabetes and cancer.
Critical incidents are defined as sudden, unexpected events that have an emotional impact sufficient to overwhelm the usually effective coping skills of an individual and cause significant psychological damage.
[5] Factors, such as family psychiatric history, or childhood abuse may mediate the relationship between critical incidents and PTSD.
[4] Critical incident-stress debriefings (CISDs) have proven to be a successful coping method over the past 15 years for individuals in high-stress, emergency response professions.
[7] Nearly 300 CISD teams exist in the United States, offering intervention to fire, paramedic, police, and other emergency personnel.
These debriefings are designed to offer emotional reassurance, time for ventilation of feelings, education about stress management, and consultation.
[3] This technique was first implemented by Jeff Mitchell, of the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation, in 1983 to treat emergency care workers in the mental health profession.
Safety is achieved when victims learn to feel relaxed and trust in the recovery process by recognizing there are disturbed emotions.
The research results supported the hypothesis that problem-solving appraisals serve a moderating function between work stress and psychological distress.
[9] A study published in 2008,[10] suggests dealing with the traumatic event immediately after it occurring proved beneficial in emergency medical technicians (EMTs).
The participants of this study described education, addressing barriers to support and improving chronic workplace stressors as suggestions and recommendations on what they thought helped the most when dealing with critical incidents.
