Social and occupational factors associated with psychological distress and disorder among disaster responders: a systematic review

BACKGROUND: When disasters occur, there are many different occupational groups involved in rescue, recovery and support efforts. This study aimed to conduct a systematic literature review to identify social and occupational factors affecting the psychological impact of disasters on responders. METHODS: Four electronic literature databases (MEDLINE®, Embase, PsycINFO® and Web of Science) were searched and hand searches of reference lists were carried out. Papers were screened against specific inclusion criteria (e.g. published in peer-reviewed journal in English; included a quantitative measure of wellbeing; participants were disaster responders). Data was extracted from relevant papers and thematic analysis was used to develop a list of key factors affecting the wellbeing of disaster responders. RESULTS: Eighteen thousand five papers were found and 111 included in the review. The psychological impact of disasters on responders appeared associated with pre-disaster factors (occupational factors; specialised training and preparedness; life events and health), during-disaster factors (exposure; duration on site and arrival time; emotional involvement; peri-traumatic distress/dissociation; role-related stressors; perceptions of safety, threat and risk; harm to self or close others; social support; professional support) and post-disaster factors (professional support; impact on life; life events; media; coping strategies). CONCLUSIONS: There are steps that can be taken at all stages of a disaster (before, during and after) which may minimise risks to responders and enhance resilience. Preparedness (for the demands of the role and the potential psychological impact) and support (particularly from the organisation) are essential. The findings of this review could potentially be used to develop training workshops for professionals involved in disaster response. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40359-016-0120-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Some notes on frequency discrimination and masking

\u3cp\u3eIn order to study frequency discrimination near and at the threshold of masking, a paradigm was used which permitted frequency discrimination and detection of noise-embedded sinusoids to be measured in one experiment. The just noticeable difference in frequency at the threshold of detection was found to be DELTA f double prime approximately equals 16 Hz with durations of the sinusoid of DELTA t equals 64 ms and with DELTA t equals 256 ms. With DELTA t equals 16 ms, DELTA f double prime approximately equals 64 Hz. The frequency of the sinusoids was 1000 Hz in all experiments. The possible implications for a place theory and a periodicity theory of pitch perception are mentioned.\u3c/p\u3

An estimation of annoyance caused by dropouts in magnetically recorded music

Both audibility and subjective appreciation of dropouts in magnetic recordings of music were estimated in a series of listening experiments in which the most vulnerable situation was simulated: the type of music, the playback conditions as well as the highly discriminating listeners cooperated to yield high annoyance ratings. In this way -worst case- (or True High Fidelity) criteria have been obtained

On the audibility of a phase effect between non-simultaneous tones

No abstract