Book Description

This book provides a systematic review of the variables and mechanisms that underpin resilience and growth in professions who face a high risk of regular and repetitive exposure to adverse or hazardous events. Given the inevitability of this exposure, promoting the acceptance and practice of this paradigm is essential for facilitating the capability of emergency responders to adapt to, and if possible to grow from, adverse and hazardous experience. By identifying salient dispositional, cognitive, group, organizational, and environmental predictors of resilience and articulating the mechanisms that link them to adaptive and growth outcomes, emergency organizations will have the capacity to intervene prior to exposure to adverse events, rather than waiting until after the event, as is currently the norm. This book thus adopts an approach that is fundamentally preventative in nature and offers practical suggestions to support the development of resilient capabilities. By describing influences on this capability that cover the person, the organization, and factors external to the workplace, it offers a more ecologically comprehensive approach to those working in this area. In addition, it offers a more comprehensive framework for this work by drawing on constructs (e.g. trust, empowerment) that would ordinarily lie outside mainstream traumatic stress research. The contents of this book provide a theoretically and empirically rigorous knowledge base and intervention framework capable of mitigating negative reactions, facilitating adaptation in the face of adversity, and enhancing the likelihood that adverse and traumatic work experiences will enrich the personal and professional lives of those who dedicate themselves to protecting and safeguarding others. It will be of interest to emergency worker counselors, police counselors, disaster workers, mental health professionals, and individuals that work with people exposed to trauma.