Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Critical Incidents: Background
- Cheshire City Council
(1995) definition of
critical incidents
- Charged with profound
emotion which may
involve serious
injury/death
- Generate a high level
of immediate or
delayed emotional
reaction
- Involve serious threat or extremely
unusual circumstances
- Attract unusual attention from
the community or media
- Surpass an individual, group,
or organisation's normal
coping mechanisms
- Post-traumatic Stress (PTS) = "the development of
certain characteristic symptoms following a
psychologically distressing event which is outside the
range of normal human experience" DSM (1987)
- Examples from Parkinson (1993): flashbacks/intrusive
memories, headaches, difficulty concentrating, feeling
guilty/worthy of blame, feeling detached from others
- Reactions to incidents vary depending on
age, experience, personality, nature of
the incident, and degree of involvement
(McNally, 2003)
- PTS is "a normal reaction of normal people to events
which, for them, are unusual or abnormal" (Parkinson,
1993). Is it?
- Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) occurs when symptoms of PTS
emerge later, persist or intensify long after the event (i.e. more than 6
weeks), and/or disrupt normal living
- DSM crtieria for adults and children over 6 years involves 3
aspects: re-experiencing; avoidance; arousal (DSM IV) or
negative cognition and mood (DSM V)
- For younger children, symptoms
differ and may include reenacting,
repetitive play, and
emotional/behavioural difficulties
- "The vast majority of people
exposed to serious traumatic
events do not develop PTSD"
(McNally, 2003)
- More than 90% had begun to
re-experience some level of anxiety
within 5 hours of rescue (Wiesaeth,
1983)