The effect of psychological first aid training program on the coping strategies used by psychological counselors in crisis intervention

The aim of this study is to examine the effect of the Psychological First Aid Training Program (PFATP) on psychological counselors' first aid achievement and coping strategies used in crisis intervention. A mixed research design was used in this study. In the first phase of the research, The opinions of psychological counselors in the Psychosocial Intervention Team of the Ministry of National Education on psychological first aid (PFA) training were examined through focus group interviews. Then, a document analysis form was applied to the psychological counselors via the online form in order to reveal the needs in the field regarding psychological first aid training. Based on the findings obtained from the focus group interview and document analysis, the relevant approaches in the literature, and the research findings, a Psychological First Aid Training Program was developed for psychological counselors. The training program was developed by the researcher by bringing together different approaches and models in an eclectic and systematic way. In the second stage, a quasi-experimental design with the pretest-posttest-follow-up control group, one of the quantitative research designs, was used to examine the effect of the training program on psychological counselors' psychological first aid achievement and coping strategies used in crisis intervention. In the qualitative research carried out in the first stage; 11 psychological counselors, 4 women, and 7 men, participated in the focus group interview. In the document analysis, an easily accessible sampling method was used and a total of 29 people, 18 women (62.1%) and 11 men (37.9%), participated in the research. In the qualitative research conducted in the first stage of the study, a focus group interview form and document analysis form were used. In the second stage, the criterion sampling method was used to determine the study group of the quantitative research. This study was carried out with a total of 33 psychological counselors, 19 in the experimental group and 14 in the control group. In the quantitative research carried out in the second stage, the data were collected with the Psychological First Aid Achievement Test (PFAAT) and the Inventory of Coping Strategies Used in Crisis Intervention (ICSUCI). The qualitative data obtained in the qualitative research carried out in the first and third stages of the research were analyzed through content analysis. Fridman test, Wilcoxon Signed Rank test, and Mann Whitney U test, which is non-parametric tests, were used to test the hypotheses of the quantitative research in the second stage. The findings obtained from the focus group interview in the first stage of the research; "The support provided by the Psychological First Aid (PFA) training are grouped under four categories: (2) lacking areas for PFA, (3) recommendations regarding the program, and (4) things to be considered in PFA training. The findings obtained in the document analysis are; They are grouped under five categories: (1) the interventions applied during and immediately after the crisis, (2) the difficulties experienced, (3) the methods of coping with the difficulties experienced, (4) the knowledge and skills needed, and (5) the needs for psychological first aid training. As a result of the quantitative research carried out in the second stage; It was determined that the training program was not effective in increasing the psychological first aid achievement level of the participants and on the coping strategies and sub-dimensions used in crisis intervention. Keywords: Psychological first aid, psychological first aid training, psychological first aid achievement, crisis intervention, coping strategies used in crisis intervention, mixed method research.