Risk and Resiliency Among Diverse PSP
Risk factors are modifiable individual factors associated with many different mental health challenges for the general population and public safety personnel (PSP). In the current study, individual resilience describes how a person perceives their own ability to cope with difficult situations. Individual resilience is associated with lower levels of mental health challenges. The current study was designed to assess how effective Emotional Resilience Skills Training (ERST) is at reducing risk factors and increasing individual resilience among PSP from different sectors. Risk and resilience were assessed at three time points: just before completing ERST, just after completing ERST, and one year after completing ERST. Results indicated participants at post-training reported lower scores on measures of risk factors and higher scores on a measure of resilience. The improvements were maintained for at least one year after completing ERST. Therefore, the current results support ERST as effective for lowering risk and increasing individual resilience among PSP, which may in turn reduce their risk for developing mental health challenges.
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Research Summary
Why was the study done?
Posttraumatic stress injuries (PTSIs; e.g., generalized anxiety disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder) are prevalent among public safety personnel (PSP; e.g., correctional workers, firefighters, paramedics, public safety communicators) because PSP are very frequently exposed to potentially psychologically traumatic events and other occupational stressors during their work. Emotional Resilience Skills Training (ERST) was developed specifically to support PSP mental health.
Risk factors are modifiable individual factors associated with many different mental health challenges (e.g., major depressive disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder). In the current study, individual resilience describes how a person perceives their own ability to cope with difficult situations. The current study was designed to assess how effective ERST is at reducing risk factors and increasing individual resilience, which should then help reduce the risk for mental health challenges among PSP.
What was done in the study?
The current research is part of the larger PSP-PTSI Study designed to assess the impact of skills taught to help protect diverse PSP from PTSIs. A research summary of the study protocol can be read [here].
Participants in the current research were PSP from different sectors (i.e., firefighters, municipal police, paramedics, public safety communicators) who completed self-report measures of several risk factors (i.e., anxiety sensitivity, fear of negative evaluation, illness and injury sensitivity, intolerance of uncertainty, pain anxiety, state anger) and individual resilience at three time points: pre-training (n = 191), post-training (n = 103), and 1-year follow-up (n = 41). Across timepoints, participants were predominantly White men from Western Canada. Statistics were used to assess for individual participant changes in risk and resilience across the three time points.
What did we find out?
Participants reported lower scores at post-training (vs. pre-training) on all risk factors except for pain anxiety. Participants also reported higher resilience at post-training (vs. pre-training). All changes from pre- to post-training were maintained at 1-year follow-up.
Where do we go from here?
The current results support ERST as effective for lowering risk factors and increasing individual resilience among PSP. Much of the data were collected after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has been associated with increased mental health challenges for PSP. The positive results from ERST appear particularly impressive because PSP who received ERST actually experienced improvements related to mental health, despite the pandemic and associated challenges. The current study needs to be replicated with a larger, more demographically diverse sample of PSP, ideally during non-pandemic times, to help clarify how broadly effective ERST can be for different PSP, and to help identify different specific benefits related to ERST.
Original Study
Khoury, J. M. B., Teckchandani, T. A., Nisbet, J., Stewart, S. H., Asmundson, G. J. G., Afifi, T. O., … Carleton, R. N. (2025). Putative risk and resiliency factors after an augmented training program for preventing posttraumatic stress injuries among public safety personnel from diverse sectors. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, 54(4), 457–476. https://doi.org/10.1080/16506073.2024.2420636