Mindfulness-based interventions have demonstrated efficacy with regard to diverse psychological symptoms across populations. Few studies have evaluated the efficacy of mindfulness-based interventions for firefighters. This pilot randomized clinical trial (RCT) is designed to determine the preliminary efficacy, feasibility, and acceptability of a novel mindfulness-based workshop (entitled "Healthy Action Zone Mindful Attention Training" [HAZMAT]) developed for firefighters (Clinical Trials Identifier: NCT04909216).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFirefighters are chronically exposed to potentially traumatic events, augmenting their risk of developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The current study aimed to examine the incremental associations of lower-order dimensions of anxiety sensitivity (AS), examined concurrently, and PTSD symptom severity among a sample of trauma-exposed firefighters. We hypothesized that AS physical and cognitive concerns would be strongly associated with all PTSD symptom clusters and overall symptom severity, after controlling for theoretically relevant covariates (trauma load; years in fire service; alcohol use severity; depressive symptom severity).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study compared across Hispanic and Caucasian firefighters the relative fit of the four-factor Emotional Numbing and Dysphoria posttraumatic stress disorder models to the more recently proposed Dysphoric Arousal five-factor model. As hypothesized, the Dysphoric Arousal five-factor model emerged as the best fitting model within each ethnic group and it also showed measurement invariance between groups (configural invariance). Results of multigroup confirmatory factor analyses and a bias-corrected bootstrap confidence intervals analytic approach indicated that the five factor model also demonstrated invariance in factor loadings (metric invariance) and item-level intercepts (scalar invariance) across the two ethnic groups.
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