BMJ 1995;311:510 (19 August)

Letters

Response to treatment varies

EDITOR,--Beverley Raphael and colleagues' editorial raises many questions about psychological debriefing and post-traumatic stress reactions.1 A military debriefing is an analysis of the events occurring on a mission and the lessons learnt. The primary aim of psychological debriefing is to provide the person with as much information as possible from all the sources available to enable the cognitive appraisal and emotional processing of a traumatic experience. This may be therapeutic or may not be. Traumatic incidents irrevocably change people as they challenge fundamental beliefs and values--spiritual, philosophical, moral, and existential. In any experience many post-traumatic stress reactions are chimeric, and even the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition, reflects the importance of the meaning of an event for the person.2

Any post-traumatic stress reaction is the product of three almost infinitely variable factors: the person's personality, coping mechanisms, and life experiences or abuses; aspects and meaning of . . . [Full text of this article]


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Relevant Article

Does debriefing after psychological trauma work?
Beverley Raphael, Lenore Meldrum, and A C Mcfarlane
BMJ 1995 310: 1479-1480. [Extract] [Full Text]

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