Critical incident, adult attachment style and posttraumatic stress disorder: A comparison of three groups of security workers

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Stefan Bogaerts
Annelies L. Daalder
Leontien M. Van der Knaap
Maarten J. Kunst
Jos Buschman
Cite this article:  Bogaerts, S., Daalder, A., Van der Knaap, L., Kunst, M., & Buschman, J. (2008). Critical incident, adult attachment style and posttraumatic stress disorder: A comparison of three groups of security workers. Social Behavior and Personality: An international journal, 36(8), 1063-1072.


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In this paper the authors render the results of research investigating adult attachment and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in a sample of Belgian security workers. The sample contained 3 subsamples: 68 individuals who had directly experienced a critical incident, 67 individuals who indirectly went through a critical incident, and 77 individuals who had not experienced a critical incident in the last six months. The analysis of the research results shows that the secure attachment style and the three PTSD trauma symptom clusters in DSM-IV - intrusion, avoidance/numbing, and hyperarousal - discriminate between the three subsamples. In other words, security workers who were directly and actively confronted with a critical incident were significantly more insecurely attached and suffered significantly more from PTSD symptoms than the groups who had no or indirect experience of a critical incident. Furthermore, trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy is widely and quite efficiently used in the treatment of PTSD. Interest has been expressed in medical approaches.

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