Vulnerability to Traumatic Stress: Personal, Organizational, and Contextual Influences (From Who Gets PTSD? Issues of Posttraumatic Stress Vulnerability, P 3-16, 2006, John M. Violanti and Douglas Paton, eds. -- See NCJ-213445)

• NCJ Number: 213446
• Author(s): Douglas Patton; John M. Violanti
• Date Published: 2006
• Length: 14 pages
• Sale Source: Charles C. Thomas
• Publication Format: Book Chapter
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This chapter summarizes each chapter of this book, which discusses the individual, group, organizational, and societal factors that influence the likelihood ("vulnerability") that protective services officers (e.g., law enforcement, fire and emergency services, and health professions) will have negative outcomes after a psychologically disturbing experience in the course of their work.

Abstract

One chapter argues that a comprehensive model of vulnerability to these negative outcomes requires the inclusion of physical health outcomes and how their origins can be influenced by psychological factors. Two chapters discuss the need to consider how pre-employment traumatic experiences influence vulnerability to traumatic stress on the job. Another chapter examines gender as a vulnerability factor in a profession typically dominated by males. Work-related demands may compound traumatic stress reactions in a climate of gender discrimination. This theme continues in the next chapter. It analyzes why and how gender influences susceptibility to negative stress outcomes. The following chapter begins with a general discussion of individual personality attributes and factors in the work environment that influence vulnerability to negative trauma outcomes in military populations. It then discusses how knowledge of these factors helps in understanding the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The chapter argues that more weight should be given to organizational culture and practices that influence the traumatic stress risk-management process. A chapter then discusses vulnerability to traumatic stress in the experiences of humanitarian aid workers, who often work in situations that are physically dangerous, politically volatile, and in which they lack customary support resources and comforts. Other chapters discuss vulnerability to negative traumatic stress outcomes in families who experience long-term military deployments; a framework for facilitating change in organizational concepts of the traumatic stress process; and a model that can be used for this process. 22 references