Traumatic Stress Among Emergency Service Personnel: Investigating Early Intervention and Help-seeking Behaviours

This thesis investigates traumatic stress among emergency service per-sonnel/first responders, with a specific focus on an early intervention of choice at the practical research setting, psychological debriefing (PD), and help-seeking behaviours. It en-deavors to do this by: i) critically reviewing the literature on psychological debrief-ing (PD) for emergency service personnel, ii) exploring the lived experienc-es of PD of trauma-exposed police officers in Northern Ireland, and iii) analyzing and describing the trauma induced help-seeking behaviours among another major first responder group, UK firefighters.