Investigation of psychosocial risk and protective factors affecting secondary traumatic stress level, burnout level and depressive symptoms in disaster and emergency professionals

In the current thesis study, secondary traumatic stress, burnout and depressive symptoms of professional providing psychosocial support in disaster and emergency events were discussed. The relationship of these psychological factors with various socio demographic factors (trauma psychology training, supervision support, pre-process training, type of participation in the study, working in collaboration with a professional organization, gender) and psychological factors (styles of coping with stress, difficulty in regulating emotions, self-care) was examined. For the research, data were collected from 140 female (87.5%) and 20 male participants aged between 23-63 (M = 29.97, SD = 6.39). In the study, Demographic Information Form, Secondary Traumatic Stress Scale, Maslach Burnout Scale, Stress Coping Styles Scale, Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale and Mindful Self-Care Scale were used. In the study, Pearson's Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient Analysis was used to examine the relationship between secondary traumatic stress, burnout and depressive symptoms, One-Way Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) was used to examine whether these variables differ according to the socio-demographic factors in the last disaster and emergency event in which the participants worked and Multiple Hierarchical Regression Analysis was performed to examine the predictive power of the relevant variables by styles of coping with stress, emotional regulation difficulties and self-care. As a result of the analysis, it was determined that the secondary traumatic stress, emotional exhaustion and depersonalization levels of the participants who received trauma psychology training were lower, the depersonalization levels of the participants who received pre-process training were lower, and the secondary traumatic stress levels of the participants who worked in cooperation with a professional organization were lower. In addition, effective coping styles with stress and ineffective coping styles with stress significantly predict secondary traumatic stress, emotional exhaustion and depressive symptoms, while effective coping styles with stress additionally significantly predict depersonalisation and personal accomplishment. Emotion regulation difficulties significantly predict secondary traumatic stress, emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and depressive symptoms, while self-care significantly predict emotional exhaustion, personal accomplishment and depressive symptoms. The findings obtained in the current study were discussed in the light of the literature.