Resilience and linked mental health outcomes in emergency service workers Mental and Behavioural Disorders
Conditions
Interventions
The study is a multi-centre randomized controlled trial in which emergency service workers are being randomly allocated to receive Mind’s 6-week resilience group or a control intervention. The interve
317 will receive the group intervention and 113 will receive the control intervention.
Mind’s 6-week group intervention aims to improve resilience and linked mental health outcomes in
Sponsors
University of Oxford (UK)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
All
Inclusion criteria
Inclusion criteria: Employed or volunteering as front-line or office-based staff in one of the following emergency services: police, fire and rescue, ambulance and search and rescue
Exclusion criteria
Exclusion criteria: Participants who score in the clinical range on measures of post-traumatic stress or depression at screening pre-baseline assessment will be excluded from the study since psychological treatment is likely to be more helpful
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame |
|---|---|
| All measures are self-report questionnaires. Baseline and Outcome Measures We are administering the following outcome measures at pre-intervention, post-intervention and at 3 month follow-up: 1. Wellbeing: Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing scale (Tennant et al., 2007). The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS), developed by Warwick and Edinburgh Universities, is a scale of 14 positively worded items with five response categories for assessing mental wellbeing. 2. Resilience: Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC; Connor & Davidson, 2003): This is a 25-item questionnaire. Each item carries a 5-point range of responses from ‘not true at all’ to ‘true nearly all of the time’. The total score ranges from 0-100 and provides a measure of resilience. The higher the score, the greater the resilience. 3. Self-efficacy: Schwarzer-Jerusalem General Self-Efficacy Scale (Schwarzer & Jerusalem,1995). The General Self-Efficacy Scale is a 10-item psychometric scale that is designed to assess optimistic self-beliefs to cope with a variety of difficult demands in life. In contrast to other scales that have been designed to assess optimism, this one explicitly refers to personal agency, i.e., the belief that one's actions are responsible for successful outcomes. 4. Ability to Problem-Solve and Achieve Goals. This is an unpublished questionnaire used in previous evaluations of Mind’s resilience intervention, which consists of 8 items to assess a person’s perception of how well they feel they can solve problems and achieve goals. It also taps self-efficacy. 5. Social Capital. Social Participation (Alden & Taylor, 2011). This is a 13-item questionnaire that assesses an individual’s social participation. Example items include: In the past month, did you: ‘Share your opinions and ideas with others?’, ‘Talk about meaningful personal experiences with others?’, | — |
Secondary
| Measure | Time frame |
|---|---|
| The secondary outcome measures are self-report and are being administered at baseline, at post-intervention and at 3 month follow-up. 1. Attributions Questionnaire (Kleim et al., 2008): This questionnaire assesses attributions of negative events. The scale has 11 items that measure negative stable attributions (e.g., ‘When bad things happened to me, I was sure it would happen again’), negative internal attributions (e.g.,’ When bad things happened, I thought it was my fault’), and negative global attributions (e.g., ‘When bad things happened to me, I couldn’t see anything positive in my life’) and helplessness (e.g., ‘When things did not go well, I got easily discouraged’). We would expect the resilience intervention to lead to changes in attributions. High scores on this questionnaire at baseline may also influence the degree of change participants experience in well-being, resilience and social capital as a result of the resilience intervention. 2. Coping Behaviour Questionnaire (short version, Carver, Scheier, & Weintraub, 1989): This questionnaire is a shorter version of the well-known COPE questionnaire and assesses coping behaviour. It consists of 17 items. Participants rate what they do in very stressful situations, such as ‘I concentrate my efforts on doing something about the situation I am in’ on a scale of 1=Not at all to 4=A lot. The questionnaire taps 7 factors linked to coping: self-distraction, active coping, denial, substance use, self-blame, behavioural disengagement and acceptance. 3. The Responses to Intrusions Questionnaire (RIQ; Clohessy & Ehlers, 1999): Intrusive memories are commonly experienced by emergency service personnel both by frontline and office-based staff. The RIQ measures responses to intrusive memories, such as negative interpretations, rumination, dissociation, and suppression. Clohessy et al. (1999) found that particular strategies in response to intrusive memories were li | — |
Countries
England, United Kingdom
Outcome results
None listed