Psychological guidelines for a medical team debriefing after a stressful event.

Medical and rescue workers are at risk of developing mental syndromes including post-traumatic stress disorder after disasters and it is widely accepted that they should be offered a preventive intervention. The Israel Defense Force Medical Corps has developed psychological guidelines for the medical forces: a medical team debriefing after treating the injured as a preventive intervention for an event that may be experienced as stressful. The main purpose of the debriefing is to investigate the circumstances of the event, analyze the medical team's functioning, and draw the relevant conclusions and the manner of their implementation. The purpose of the guidelines is to enhance mental coping, possibly prevent stress reactions, and help in screening individuals in need of further professional intervention for stress reactions. These guidelines are suitable for similar interventions in other professional teams.

Prevalence of self-reported specific phobia symptoms in an Israeli sample of young conscripts.

Specific phobia is a very prevalent disorder with high comorbidity rates. The aim of this study was to assess prevalence of specific phobia symptoms in a sample of Israeli young adults. Eight hundred fifty young Israeli soldiers participated in the study. Measures included a questionnaire on specific phobias and a socio-demographic questionnaire. Data on eight specific fears representing DSM-IV-TR specific phobias were analyzed to evaluate prevalence of phobic symptoms and find potential socio-demographic correlates. Prevalence of fears and specific phobic symptoms was 49.1 and 8.7%, respectively. Most frequent phobic symptoms were from animals, being alone, heights, injury and closed places. The following variables were accompanied by more phobic symptoms: male gender, role of mechanic, not having completed the matriculation exams, lack of friends and romantic relationships, therapy prior to enlistment or during the military service and having received psychotropic drugs in the past. Based on a stepwise regression analysis, the following variables contributed significantly to the prediction of phobic symptoms: lack of friends and romantic relationships, school absenteeism and role of mechanic. Our findings corroborate results from other studies in the Western world regarding the high prevalence of specific phobia symptomatology, as well as its distribution and socio-demographic correlates.

Treatment of eating disorders improves eating symptoms but not alexithymia and dissociation proneness.

BACKGROUND: Eating disorders have been reported to increase in frequency, but it is yet unclear what psychological characteristics increase the proneness toward the development of eating disorders. Alexithymia (AL; a difficulty in awareness to one's emotions) and dissociation proneness are 2 such plausible features. METHOD: In this study, we evaluated the efficacy of a combined intervention (group therapy, individual therapy, and pharmacologic therapy) in a group of soldiers with eating disorders (n = 30) in the Israel Defense Forces. Moreover, we examined whether AL and dissociation proneness were frequent in this group and whether clinical improvement was associated with an improvement in these factors as well. RESULTS: High scores on the AL and dissociation measures were noted. The intervention was associated with a 50% decrease in the Eating Attitudes Test and Eating Disorders Inventory scores, consistent with our clinical impression of improvement in the eating symptoms. However, the decrease observed on the Dissociative Experiences Scale and Toronto Alexithymia Scale scores was minimal. CONCLUSIONS: The combined intervention was efficient in our sample of patients with eating disorder despite the small sample size. The aforementioned specific psychometric change may be indicative of the lack of importance of changes in AL or dissociation proneness in the short-term improvement in patients with eating disorder.