Open AccessChange in Coping Strategies Following Intensive Intervention for Special‐service Military Personnel as Civil Emergency Responders
Author(s) -
Bian Yongqiao,
Xiong Hongyan,
Zhang Lu,
Tang Tian,
Liu Zhen,
Xu Rufu,
Lin Hui,
Xu Bing
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
journal of occupational health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.664
H-Index - 59
ISSN - 1348-9585
DOI - 10.1539/joh.o10009
Subject(s) - coping (psychology) , military personnel , military service , psychology , medicine , clinical psychology , archaeology , history , political science , law
Change in Coping Strategies Following Intensive Intervention for Special‐service Military Personnel as Civil Emergency Responders: Yongqiao Bian, et al. Department of Military Epidemiology, College of Military Prevention, Third Military Medical University, ChinaObjectives To evaluate the effectiveness of a coping training program for the Chinese Special‐Service Military Personnel (SSMP) as civil emergency responders. Methods A parallel control trial was carried out in four specialservice units (camps) stationed in Chongqing, China from Feb. 14th to May 30th, 2009. A total of 396 subjects were recruited and were randomly divided into an intervention group (n=201) and a control group (n=195) by clustering. Over the trial, participants in the intervention group Received an additional coping‐training program with 14 weekly two‐hour sessions while the control group continued their normal work. Results Of all 396 participants, 343 attended all the sessions and completed the given measures. In comparison to their own scores in coping strategies at pre‐intervention, significant and positive changes were observed in the intervention group (n=176) at post‐intervention. Except for the strategy of self‐blaming, the coping strategies including problem‐solving, help‐seeking, avoidance, fantasy and rationalization were improved. The descending order of the absolute change values over the trial in 5 coping strategies was fantasy, help‐seeking, avoidance, problem‐solving and rationalization. In addition, most subscales of social support and self consistency, as powerful predictors of coping strategies, changed significantly over the intervention, while these changes were not observed in the control group (n=167). Conclusions: With the combined use of modular contents and procedural methods, our intervention not only led to fewer choices of immature coping strategies like fantasy, escape and rationalization, but also raised the use of mature coping strategies such as problemsolving and help‐seeking. Accordingly, the intervention will be very helpful for regular coping training of Special‐Service Units, something which can be verified and generalized for the whole SSMP in a future study.