Abstract
Disaster response work is associated with various psychological outcomes. In post-disaster conditions, social support is generally observed to impact mental health, particularly for survivors. This review was conducted to survey the extent of social support effectiveness on disaster responder groups. Published quantitative social support studies on police, emergency medical responders, rescue and recovery workers, firefighters, and military responders were searched in various academic databases using keyword searches, a reference list search, and a citation search that resulted in 24 studies with 90 effect sizes being included in the final data base. Articles were coded and effect sizes were averaged using the Hedges–Vevea Random Effects model. Nineteen categories of psychological outcomes (for example, anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress symptoms, and psychological distress) and eight classifications of support were coded. Social support was found to be associated with anxiety, burnout, depression, job control, job satisfaction, psychological distress, turnover intentions, and work engagement, with mean effect sizes from − 0.36 to 0.57. Most studies measured perceived social support and negative outcomes. Social support correlated with outcomes in police responders and rescue and recovery workers. This review discusses the breadth of effect of social support, as well as other elements, such as temporal factors, that may affect the effectiveness of social support in disaster responders.
Highlights
Disasters are collective experiences that affect people at the community and individual levels
The current study differs from previous work in three major aspects: (1) our work explores the strength of association of social support and psychological outcomes in the context of disasters; (2) this study casts a wider net in terms of how social support is defined and how psychological outcomes are covered; and (3) we attempt to synthesize these associations in terms of facets of support, type of responder, type of outcome, and support and outcome measurement time lags
This study examined the effects of social support on various psychological outcomes in disaster first responders
Summary
Disasters are collective experiences that affect people at the community and individual levels Exposure to these events is associated with both negative (Bonanno et al 2010; Goldmann and Galea 2014; Fullerton et al 2015) and positive (Bonanno et al 2010; Harada et al 2015) psychological outcomes, which are observed in the general affected population. Hobfoll and Stokes (1988)—and later, Kaniasty and Norris (2009)—highlighted three facets of this construct: (1) receipt of actual assistance; (2) perception of availability of support; and (3) integration in a network of caring individuals These facets of support are viewed to make unique contributions to psychological outcomes in the aftermath of disastrous events
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