Citation

Stene LE, Fernandez A, Gindt M, Nachon O, Askenazy F. Front. Psychol. 2023; 14: e1168679.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, Frontiers Research Foundation)

DOI

10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1168679

PMID

37034923

PMCID

PMC10075227

Abstract

Planning psychosocial care is essential to efficiently respond to and recover from mass casualty incidents, such as terrorist attacks, accidents and natural disasters. Since such incidents are typically unpredictable and often require urgent responses under chaotic circumstances, it is challenging to organize an adapted psychosocial care response to identify and follow-up affected individuals who need psychosocial care interventions. A large number of people may be impacted, including those directly exposed; professional or volunteer first responders; people living or working nearby; family members or friends of the survivors and the bereaved. Thus, it may be difficult to identify and reach the target population(s), even if some clinical and environmental factors that may influence the risk of developing posttraumatic health problems have been described in scientific literature (Brewin et al., 2000; Trickey et al., 2012). In order to prevent or treat posttraumatic health problems in affected populations, it is essential to learn from good practices and the best available evidence. Unfortunately, existing research is scarce and international guidelines on post-disaster psychosocial care are largely based on expert consensus (Bisson et al., 2010; Te Brake and Dückers, 2013; EU Handbook on Victims of Terrorism, 2021). Furthermore, little is known about how different countries actually meet psychosocial care needs after man-made and natural disasters. This knowledge is essential in order to strengthen the public health preparedness to disasters internationally and transnationally.

Considering the scarcity of studies in this field, we proposed a Research Topic with the goal to generate knowledge and accumulate experiences on psychosocial care responses to terrorist attacks, large-scale accidents and other disasters across different settings, populations and countries. There is an urgent need for interventions that can be implemented in humanitarian settings in areas with limited healthcare resources and where armed conflicts and disasters are prevalent. In this context, the study of Ahmadi et al. provided promising findings on a low-intensity and community accessible intervention with modified written exposure therapy to reduce posttraumatic stress symptoms. This pilot randomized control trial was conducted in Afghanistan and included adolescent girls exposed to a terrorist attack. If future studies also find similar favorable results for this type of low-intensity therapy in different population groups, the intervention could be delivered by personnel with minimal training and potentially be made widely available for communities with limited healthcare facilities.

Language: en

Keywords

posttraumatic stress disorder; disasters; terrorist attacks; mass casualty incidents; posttraumatic health problems; psychosocial care