Coping responses and posttraumatic stress symptomatology in urban fire service personnel

(E)mergency workers, including urban fire fighters and paramedics, must cop e with a variety of duty-related stressors including traumatic incident exp osures. Little is known about coping responses of emergency workers or whet her their coping responses predict future mental health outcomes. The previ ously formulated Coping Responses of Rescue Workers Inventory (CRRWI) under went a principal components analysis employing a sample (N = 220) of urban fire fighters and paramedics. Six empirically and theoretically distinct CR RWI components were identified which were relatively stable over a 6-month period. Scores on one of the CRRWI scales, but neither years of service nor their past half year's traumatic incident exposures, predicted future chan ges in self-reports of posttraumatic stress symptomatology.