COMMENTARY

Disasters

Health complaints following an air disaster: a "second disaster"

L A Page, S C Wessely

Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College, London, UK

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr L A Page
Section of General Hospital Psychiatry, Room 3.14, Weston Education Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, 10 Cutcombe Road, London SE5 9RJ, UK; l.page@iop.kcl.ac.uk

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Commentary on the paper by Huizink et al (see page 657)

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Keywords: disaster; emergency workers; mental health; medically unexplained symptoms; media

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Research into the medium and long term health consequences of disaster has mushroomed in recent years. The majority of this research has focused on direct "victims", that is, members of the general population who have been directly exposed to disaster. Emergency workers and other occupational groups have been less studied, possibly due to the assumption that adverse health effects will be minimal for them. The study by Huizink et al in this issue¹ is therefore a particularly welcome addition to the disaster literature; the authors investigate an occupational cohort who performed rescue work during, what turned out to be, one of the strangest man-made disasters of recent times—the 1992 Amsterdam (or Bijlmermeer) Air Disaster.

Huizink et al invited a cohort of police officers and fire-fighters to participate in the study; over half the participants had done disaster related work at the time of the Amsterdam Air Disaster and were . . . [Full text of this article]

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Relevant Article

Long term health complaints following the Amsterdam Air Disaster in police officers and fire-fighters

A C Huizink, P Slottje, A B Witteveen, J A Bijlsma, J W R Twisk, N Smidt, I Bramsen, W van Mechelen, H M van der Ploeg, L M Bouter, T Smid
Occup. Environ. Med. 2006 63: 657-662. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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• Morgan, O., Murray, V., Snashall, D. (2008). Occupational medicine, public health and disasters: a shared agenda?. Occup. Environ. Med. 65: 367-368 [Full Text]  
• Loomis, D. (2006). Work in brief. Occup. Environ. Med. 63: 647-647 [Full Text]  

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