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The Impact of Psychological First aid Training on the Providers: A Systematic Review

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2022

Mitra Movahed ,
Melika Khaleghi-Nekou ,
Elahesadat Alvani  and
Mahdi Sharif-Alhoseini Open the ORCID record for Mahdi Sharif-Alhoseini [Opens in a new window]
Mitra Movahed
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, HELP University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Melika Khaleghi-Nekou
Affiliation:
Sina Trauma and Surgery Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
Elahesadat Alvani
Affiliation:
University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
Mahdi Sharif-Alhoseini*
Affiliation:
Sina Trauma and Surgery Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
*
Corresponding author: Mahdi Sharif-Alhoseini, Emails: sharif.mahdi@gmail.com, msharif@tums.ac.ir.
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Abstract

Objective:

The consensus is that psychological first aid is a practical, early psychosocial intervention to mitigate the distress caused by disasters. This review aimed to investigate PFA training’s efficacy in the existing studies and evaluate these programs’ impact on trainees.

Methods:

MEDLINE (National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD), EMBASE (Elsevier, Amsterdam, Netherlands), PsycInfo (American Psychological Association, Washington, DC), and Cochrane Library (John Wiley & Sons, Hobken, NJ, USA) were searched on August 1, 2020 without language and date limitation. The Cochrane Risk of Bias tool for randomized controlled trials and the Risk of Bias in Non-Randomized Studies - of Interventions (ROBINS-I) (Cochrane, London, UK) were used to assess the quality of the studies included. SPSS (IBM Corp., Endicott, NY, USA) was used for descriptive, comparative, and correlational summaries.

Results:

From 376 articles, only 9 studies met the criteria and were included after screening. The most common outcome was knowledge improvement, followed by increased confidence, and competence. Other outcomes encompassed Attitude, preparedness, and therapeutic engagement.

Conclusion:

PFA is the most suggested early intervention aftermath and could be acquired by professionals and non-professionals in the mental health area. Nonetheless, to obtain the desired outcome, PFA training programs’ quality is vital. This review revealed that most training programs’ duration was short, without scenario-based interactions and post-training supervisions. More controlled trials are required to measure the effectiveness of PFA training on the providers.

Keywords

emergency responderspsychological first aidpsychosocial supporttraining
Type
Systematic Review
Information
Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness , Volume 17 , 2023 , e120
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc.

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