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Biopsychosocial correlates of psychoactive substance use in professional firefighters

Paweł Antoni Rasmus, Józef Kocur, Marcin Flirski, Tomasz Sobów

Med Sci Tech 2013; 54:70-75

DOI: 10.12659/MST.889093


Background: Stress and tension associated with events firefighters experience may increase the likelihood of a variety of harmful behaviors. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the magnitude of psychoactive substance use in a group of firefighters from the Lodz Fire Department, to investigate associations between psychobiological (anxiety, emotional control) and psychosocial factors (social support, coping with stress) and a tendency to use psychoactive substances.
Material and Methods: The participants recruited were 168 male professional firefighters from the Lodz Fire Department who participated daily in fire and rescue operations in response to local threats. The research protocol comprised 6 evaluation scales, including sociodemographic and risk behavior questionnaires, Spielberger’s STAI, Courtauld Emotional Control Scale, Nieland Social Support Questionnaire, and Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations.
Results: Among the risk behaviors studied, the tested firemen most often reported drinking alcohol and smoking tobacco. Firefighters reporting alcohol abstinence were characterized by higher control of negative emotions, including control of depression and anger. Alcohol consumption was associated with higher satisfaction from received social support. Furthermore, avoidance-oriented coping strategies, including distraction, may lead to a higher risk of harmful drinking. The frequency of smoking could be associated with anxiety as a trait, and lower expression of anxiety characterized sporadic tobacco smokers.
Conclusions: The issue of using specific psychoactive substances in the studied group of firefighters can be considered significant. The presence of associations between psychobiological factors and a tendency to use psychoactive substances was demonstrated.

Keywords: Biopsychosocial, Psychoactive substances, firefighters,

This paper has been published under Creative Common Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) allowing to download articles and share them with others as long as they credit the authors and the publisher, but without permission to change them in any way or use them commercially.
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