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Detrimental Effects of Post-Incident Debriefing on Memory and Psychological Responses

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Abstract

Emergency service personnel, such as police officers, firefighters and paramedics, often take part in Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD; Mitchell, 1983) following exposure to traumatic events. However, there is evidence that these group debriefing sessions may actually increase the risk of PTSD and permanently distort the participants' memories for the events. This study compared the impact of two different elements of CISD on recall for an event and psychological well-being. In pairs, undergraduate students unknowingly viewed slightly different versions of a stressful video. Participants were then randomly allocated to one of three conditions: emotion-focused debriefing, fact-focused debriefing, or no debriefing. Participants who received fact-focused debriefing incorporated more misinformation into memory and also reported more intrusive thoughts about the video than the controls. Participants who received emotion-focused debriefing reported more confabulated items than participants in the control condition and reported more intrusive thoughts. These findings suggest that some aspects of CISD may be problematic. Therefore, it may be important to work toward the development of new, more effective post-trauma interventions.

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Acknowledgments

A special thanks to Michelle Moulds for her helpful and insightful comments on our manuscript. This research was supported by an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant (LP0989719).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology, The University of Sydney, Sydney, 2006, Australia

    Helen M. Paterson & Keenan Whittle

  2. School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

    Richard I. Kemp

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  1. Helen M. Paterson
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  2. Keenan Whittle
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  3. Richard I. Kemp
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Correspondence to Helen M. Paterson.

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Paterson, H.M., Whittle, K. & Kemp, R.I. Detrimental Effects of Post-Incident Debriefing on Memory and Psychological Responses. J Police Crim Psych 30, 27–37 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-014-9141-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-014-9141-6

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