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Rapid Triage of Mental Health Risk in Emergency Medical Workers: Findings From Typhoon Haiyan.
Abstract
<h4>Objective</h4>To determine the ability of a novel responder mental health self-triage
system to predict post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in emergency medical responders
after a disaster.<h4>Methods</h4>Participants in this study responded to Typhoon Haiyan,
which struck the Philippines in November 2013. They completed the Psychological Simple
Triage and Rapid Treatment (PsySTART) responder triage tool, the PTSD Checklist (PCL-5)
and the Patient Health Questionnaire-8 (PHQ-8) shortly after responding to this disaster.
The relationships between these 3 tools were compared to determine the association
between different risk exposures while providing disaster medical care and subsequent
levels of PTSD or depression.<h4>Results</h4>The total number of PsySTART responder
risk factors was closely related to PCL-5 scores ≥38, the threshold for clinical PTSD.
Several of the PsySTART risk factors were predictive of clinical levels of PTSD as
measured by the PCL-5 in this sample of deployed emergency medical responders.<h4>Conclusions</h4>The
presence of a critical number and type of PsySTART responder self-triage risk factors
predicted clinical levels of PTSD and subclinical depression in this sample of emergency
medical workers. The ability to identify these disorders early can help categorize
an at-risk subset for further timely "stepped care" interventions with the goals of
both mitigating the long-term consequences and maximizing the return to resilience.
(Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2018;12:19-22).
Type
Journal articleSubject
HumansRisk Factors
Mental Disorders
Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic
Adult
Middle Aged
Triage
Philippines
Female
Male
Emergency Responders
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/26391Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1017/dmp.2017.37Publication Info
Sylwanowicz, Lauren; Schreiber, Merritt; Anderson, Craig; Gundran, Carlos Primero
D; Santamaria, Emelie; Lopez, Jaifred Christian F; ... Tuazon, AC (2018). Rapid Triage of Mental Health Risk in Emergency Medical Workers: Findings From Typhoon
Haiyan. Disaster medicine and public health preparedness, 12(1). pp. 19-22. 10.1017/dmp.2017.37. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/26391.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Jaifred (Jim) Lopez
Student
Jaifred Christian Lopez, or Jim, is a doctoral student at the Department of Population
Health Sciences, Duke University. He is a clinically trained physician (licensed in
the Philippines) with a master’s in public management. He now focuses on health systems
research.
He is currently involved in projects related to health systems innovation within the
US Veterans Health Administration, and in the global health context (through ongoing
collaborations with colleagues based in the

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