International Journal of Emergency Mental Health

In this article, we posit the hypothesis that the January 2010 earthquake in Port-au-Prince reawakened a number of traumas linked to the natural disasters that struck Gonaives in 2004 and 2008. The study set out to evaluate the PTSD and social support in the affected areas in Gonaives seven years after the disasters. The study covered a sample of 917 participants, of whom 534 (58.23%) were females, aged between 10 and 23 with an average age of 16.03 (SD = 2.65). A variety of scales were used: the Clinician Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS-1); the Traumatic Exposure Severity Scale (TESS); the PTSD Check-List Civilian version (PCL-C); the Impact of Event Scale Revised (IES-R) and the Social Support Questionnaire (SSQ)...

Workplace violence (WPV) is a growing problem for healthcare providers, particularly for those in the Emergency department (ED), with its increasing frequency and severity. Characteristics of WPV are similar in different parts of the World with different sociocultural and economic status. As this problem remains unsolved, its unwanted effects on mental and physical health of staff become more problematic. The most common psychological affects are reduced job satisfaction and fear. When the reasons of WPV are investigated; lack of preventive policies, educational inadequacy, unwillingness to report assaults as a result of a consideration of violence as a routine by the staff and unmet expectations of patients and their family may be listed...

Three years have passed since the earthquake, in the coastal areas in the disaster area, by population transfer or the like from the temporary housing, the importance of the regeneration and revitalization of the local community has been pointed out. This study performed a preliminary study to aim at the psychological inspection about an effect of the horticultural therapy as the means of the local community reproduction support of the disaster area. Forty five women who are living in the coastal area of Miyagi Prefecture participated in this study...

Awareness Integration (AI) is a new model in the field of psychotherapy which synthesizes numerous concepts from cognitive, behavioral, emotional, and body-mind theories. AI aims to enhance self-awareness, increase self-esteem, release past traumas and psychological blocks, reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression, and promote a clear, realistic, and positive attitude in order to learn and implement new skills for an effective, productive, and functional life. This model allows for release and then integration through flexibly structured questions and expansive interventions that connect core beliefs, emotions, locations in the body where emotions are stored and relevant/original memories...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Sex offenders and violent offenders in general that were intoxicated at the time of their offense often claim that they were too intoxicated to know 1) what they were doing at the time of the offense and 2) therefore unable to recall the details of the offense situation the next day. What the literature has to say contradicts the claims of sex offenders or violent offenders who claim they were "out of control" and that they do not recall what they did in the offense situation. Alcohol use (mild to moderate consumption) appears to result in 1) alcohol myopia; 2) increased attentional focus on the more salient emotions (whether negative or positive); 3) improved creative thinking and improved attention to the activity at hand; 4) decreased frontal lobe activity (e...

Mental health service providers are at risk of experiencing compassion fatigue, burnout, and vicarious traumatization as a result of working in difficult contexts or when working with individuals who have experienced trauma. Numerous studies have examined the mitigating factors in professional caregivers' stress and related prevention strategies thought to be associated with professional self-care. This retrospective study examined the impact of debriefing strategies referred to as Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) and spirituality in 22 mental health service providers working in a stressful, cross-cultural context...

Suicide is one of the major causes of morbidity and mortality amongst children and adolescents. In 2004 the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a "black-box" warning for antidepressants in children and adolescents, stating that these drugs may increase suicidality, a term encompassing both suicidal thoughts and behavior, especially in the first few weeks of treatment. The warning was extended in 2007 to antidepressants prescribed to adults aged 25 and under. The evidence behind this decision stemmed from meta-analyses of antidepressant clinical trials that demonstrated a slight increase in suicidality in those receiving antidepressants versus those treated with a placebo...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

INTRODUCTION: Chlamydia trachomatis is a frequently encountered condition by general physicians, urologists and infectious diseases specialists. It can affect both genders and causes significant morbidity if not treated properly and promptly. In addition, it can cause ophthalmia neonatorum, which manifests as neonatal conjunctivitis in the newborns. METHODOLOGY: The data was collected from fourteen tertiary care hospitals in two provinces of Pakistan during the time period of four months (September-December 2013)...

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is possibly an overlooked diagnosis of victims suffering from traffic accidents sustaining serious to severe injuries. This paper investigates the incidence of PTSD after traffic accidents in Germany. Data from an accident research unit were analyzed in regard to collision details, and preclinical and clinical data. Preclinical data included details on crash circumstances and estimated injury severity as well as data on victims' conditions (e.g. heart rate, blood pressure, consciousness, breath rate)...

Much is known about the negative impact of emergency services work, but no studies, to date, have investigated its long-term consequences. This cross-sectional study assesses the possible long-term effects on quality of life, of trauma exposure and emergency work in a sample of retirees from the Irish emergency services (n = 169) and a comparison group of non-emergency service retirees (n = 140). A multi-questionnaire postal survey was administered to assess quality of life (QoL; WHOQOL-BREF), experiences of trauma, and trauma symptoms (PSS-SR)...

Suicide is an adverse event that can occur even when patient are hospitalized in psychiatric facilities. This study delineates the demographic characteristics of suicide attempts in mental hospitals and psychiatric wards of general hospitals in Japan, a country where the suicide rate is remarkably high. Analyses of incident reports on serious suicide attempts in psychiatric inpatients were performed using prefectural incident records between April 1, 2001, and December 31, 2012. Suicide reports were included for 35 incidents that occurred over 11 years, and demonstrated that 83% of patients (n = 29) committed suicide and 17% (n = 6) survived their attempt with serious aftereffects, such as cognitive impairment or persistent vegetative state...

This study used an exploratory design with a hermeneutic approach. The aim was to increase the understanding of the emotional responses of family members during the patient's critical care. Interviews from the main researcher's previous study about relatives of patients in an intensive care unit (ICU) were used. Two of these interviews were chosen, one with the mother and one with the father of an adult young patient, who became critically ill and admitted to a general ICU in south-west Sweden. The present study identified six feelings describing the emotional responses of the family members...

In the years since 2005, suicides among U.S. military personnel have risen dramatically, and continue to rise despite significant leadership attention to suicide awareness and prevention. Prevention efforts have proven unsuccessful, perhaps because they have focused on associated factors, rather than the underlying more fundamental contributing ones. Current suicide prevention and education programs in the military address the symptoms, while ignoring the underlying problem. This paper presents a new taxonomy for organizing and thinking about the multitude of factors associated with suicide in the military...

Previous research suggests that there is an elevated risk of suicide among workers within law enforcement occupations. The present study examined the proportionate mortality for suicide in law enforcement in comparison to the US working population during 1999, 2003-2004, and 2007, based on Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health National Occupational Mortality Surveillance data. We analyzed data for all law enforcement occupations and focused on two specific law enforcement occupational categories-detectives/criminal investigators/ police and corrections officers...

Previous research by this group identified gender interactions between some protective factors and psychological distress in police officers. This study extends this result to include a larger sample of police officers and a more comprehensive list of protective factors. These results confirm the conclusion that the commitment dimension of hardiness appears to have a stronger protective association with psychological distress among women. Furthermore, an avoidant coping style appears to be somewhat more positively associated with psychological distress among women...