Transportation disasters—a review

In 1991 we invited colleagues to contribute to a special issue on transportation disasters . We were interested in studies of survivors and other directly affected persons, such as medical personnel and rescue workers, following transportation accidents such as air-crashes, train-derailments or crashes, bus accidents and ferry or other maritime disasters. Follow-ups have been performed or planned after many of these more well-known disasters . The prevalence of these events makes it important to learn their psychological impact, to help improve our understanding of, and interventions with, survivors. Studying the effects of traumatic stress on disaster survivors will also, contribute to our empirical and theoretical knowledge about the relationship between biolagical/somatic and psychological symptoms. In this introductory paper, same studies on the psychological and psychiatric effects of train, maritime, and flight accidents are reviewed . Following the introduction are the four papers in our special section which describe empirical studies of a number of these incidents .