AUTHOR=Azizi Maryam , Ebadi Abbas , Ostadtaghizadeh Abbas , Dehghani Tafti Abbasali , Roudini Juliet , Barati Mohammad , Khankeh Hamid Reza , Bidaki Reza 

TITLE=Psychological Distress Model Among Iranian Pre-Hospital Personnel in Disasters: A Grounded Theory Study

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=12

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.689226

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2021.689226

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=<p><bold>Objective:</bold> Pre-hospital personnels (PHPs) who work in disasters under extreme pressure, uncertainty, and complex situations are victims of disasters themselves, and there is a link between experiencing such incidents and mental health problems. Because most studies focus on the injured and less on the psychological issues of PHPs, the present study aimed to develop a model to provide relief for PHPs in disasters from a psychological perspective.</p><p><bold>Methods:</bold> A grounded theory methodology recommended by Corbin and Strauss (<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="B7">2015</xref>) was employed. PHPs (<italic>n</italic> = 24) participated in a semi-structured interview between July 2018 to May 2020.</p><p><bold>Results:</bold> In the analysis of the pre-hospital staff interviews, three main themes were extracted, namely, providing relief with struggle (complexity of incident scenes, command-organizational and occupational challenges), psychological distress (psychological regression and psychological empowerment), and consequences (resilience and job burnout). Seven categories and 22 subcategories were explored from our data <italic>via</italic> the grounded theory approach</p><p><bold>Conclusions:</bold> The PHPs managed psychological distress with two approaches: psychological self-empowerment and regression, which resulted in resilience and burnout, respectively. Due to the lack of enough support, the resilience of the PHPs was short-term, turned into burnout over time, and affected the structural factors again as a cycle.</p>