The impact of disaster work on community volunteers: The role of peri-traumatic distress, level of personal affectedness, sleep quality and resource loss, on post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms and subjective health

At 18 months post-disaster the findings showed high levels of PTSD symptoms and subjective health complaints. Quality of sleep was related to both outcomes but resource loss only to PTSD symptoms. Neither peri-traumatic distress nor level of affectedness by the disaster (external versus directly affected volunteers), were predictive of symptoms. This study indicates that characteristics of disaster work e.g. low quality of sleep, may be an important contributor to PTSD symptoms and subjective health complaints in volunteers.