MULTIMODAL ASSESSMENT OF EMOTIONAL DISTRESS AFTER WORK-RELATED ACCIDENTS

Work accidents can be traumatic events that might give rise to a variety of symptoms of emotional distress. Overall, these symptoms have been described as a dysfunctional stress response, sometimes meeting the diagnostic criteria for acute stress disorder, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The present study was aimed at investigating the severity of emotional distress symptoms in individuals who experienced workplace accidents. A multimodal assessment was adopted, including subjective and psychophysiological indices of affective and cognitive responding. Thirty-eight subjects who had experienced work-related accidents were recruited from the Italian National Association for Victims of Occupational Injuries (Associazione Nazionale Mutilati e Invalidi del Lavoro, ANMIL) and compared with 38 control subjects. In a sub-group of subjects, skin conductance and the startle reflex were recorded during the viewing of standardized trauma-related and trauma-unrelated pictures. Participants who underwent a work accident reported more severe post-traumatic symptoms than controls, as indicated by higher PTSD Symptom Scale (PSS) scores. They also showed more attentional and memory deficits than controls. Moreover, participants with higher PSS scores showed more severe depressive symptomatology and lower psychophysiological reactivity than participants with lower PSS scores, indicating a lack of concordance between self-reported symptoms and physiological activation.