Depression and PTSD in emergency workers

My work involves developing interventions for anxiety disorders. I particularly am interested in working with emergency workers because these are people we know are going to be exposed to very stressful and traumatising situations. My work is an opportunity to develop an intervention to prevent them developing problems after they have been through something incredibly stressful. I think my research will help to prevent problems from developing in people who are at risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder, not just PTSD, but also depression. So most people who develop PTSD also get very depressed by the impact PTSD has had on their lives. So the work that I'm doing, the research I'm involved in, is about not just treating people with PTSD but helping to prevent the disorder from starting in the first place. We hope to better understand the link between well-being and resilience and immunity and I think this is a really important area to look at because we know that people with mental health problems are more likely to have physical health problems. There is a very established link there. I think my work will benefit future generations because we'll learn a lot about prevention and how to prevent mental health problems. We have some knowledge about how to treat mental health problems but the field is really moving to prevention. So a lot of the anxiety disorders that people suffer from that we see in adulthood actually start in childhood or adolescence and so if we can start to develop effective treatments and prevention programs in schools or in clinics that can be offered at an earlier age then we really have an opportunity to change the course of young people's lives and give them a life they deserve. I think mental health science deserves investment because people who suffer from mental health problems are extremely debilitated and disadvantaged and they don't have an opportunity to lead a life that matches their dreams. If we can invest in mental health science and really understand why these problems develop and develop extremely effective treatments then everybody will have opportunity to lead the life that they deserve living. I think the main issues of preventing progress in mental health science, one is stigma. So it's potentially, it's still today people don't see mental health suffering as the same as physical health suffering so it's tied into that is the the failure to really see the link or to really fully understand or accept that there is a link between how well we're doing mentally and how well we are doing physically and if we can work with one then we'll help the other area.