Traumatic stress and ways of coping of community residents exposed to a train disaster

Objectives: The aims of this study were to examine the degree of traumatic stress and the coping strategies employed by community residents who lived on both sides of a rail track where a train collision occurred in 1996 in S tafford, UK. The hypothesis was that there would be a high level of traumat ic stress and that emotion-focused coping would be the predictor to distres s. Method: This was a cross-sectional survey with a retrospective design in wh ich 66 community residents, who lived between 30 and 100 feet away from the crash site, were interviewed. The study began approximately 7 months after the disaster. The Impact of Event Scale (IES), the General Health Question naire (GHQ-28) and the Ways of Coping Checklists (WOC) were administered to the residents. Results: On the whole, the results did not entirely support the hypothesis. The residents were found to have experienced some intrusive thoughts and a voidance behaviour but their mean scores were significantly lower than thos e of standardized samples. Thirty-five per cent scored at 4 or above on the GHQ-28. Traumatic stress was predicted by both emotion-focused and problem -focused coping strategies. Conclusion: Although community residents were not on the train or related t o the dead or injured in any way, they could, after being exposed to a trai n disaster, manifest traumatic stress symptoms which had long-lasting effec ts. Such traumatic stress was found to be associated with coping strategies of community residents characterized by their efforts to manage or alter t he source of stress, and by their efforts to regulate stressful emotions.