Q&A on Psychological trauma
Often, a significant incident can result in stress, anxiety, depression or even Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This can be as a result of injury, or develop from frustrations revolving around being unable to work. Here we discuss how the rehabilitation team have helped customers who have experienced traumatic incidences with Lynette Grocott, Claims Team Manager, Rehabilitation.
What sort of incidents lead to psychological trauma?
Any situation where a person has been confronted by an event that is unexpected, powerful, and extreme and where people feel out of control and consider their life to be in danger is considered a Trauma. Trauma reactions can also occur when people witness such an event, or hear about a traumatic event that involved their loved ones. Usually traumatic events are not ones considered to be part of everyday experience
Our General Insurance Zurich Rehabilitation team work with people who have been in involved in a whole range of traumatic incidents including:
- Serious HGV accidents usually involving fatalities
- Coach crashes
- Aviation crashes
- Building collapse
- Armed raid in the workplace
- Assaults at work
- Accidents and injuries at work
- Sudden death of colleagues
- Suicide of colleague
- Crime within the workplace
What impact does experiencing these have on people’s lives?
When a person has had a traumatic incident, they demonstrate a range of distressing reactions. These include:
- Interrupted sleep
- Flashbacks of the incident
- Intrusive thoughts about the incident
- Feelings of anxiety, anger, guilt, and sadness
- Poor concentration
- Avoidance of certain people and places
These reactions would typically last for 6-8 weeks, and reduce in intensity during that time. If the reactions don’t decrease in intensity over this time, and the reactions are still present 6 to 8 weeks after an incident, the person may have a Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
The Zurich Rehabilitation Team General Insurance work closely with our specialist, Resilience and Trauma Management Service to provide psychological support to people in the early aftermath of trauma. This service provides support to help build resilience, provide incident response and supports business recovery after an incident. This can be in the form of onsite group and individual support, manager consultation, trauma helplines and information.
How do Zurich help?
The Zurich Rehabilitation Team General Insurance will in many cases will be the first health professional to speak to the individual and that initial conversation can go many ways.
The individual may not say very much at all and in a very skilful and sensitive way the Zurich Rehabilitation Team Case Manager will be able to establish whether there is an acute stress reaction to the incident. Not everyone will develop an acute stress or anxiety disorder, but what we don’t want to do is ask the wrong questions and add to the stress of the situation.
Other individuals will want to talk and go over the events in a very detailed way and focus on what was an issue for them. This could be the whole event or something fixed such as they were unable to help or that they had feelings of guilt. This can be a very lengthy conversation and one in which the Zurich Rehabilitation Team Case Manager starts to build the therapeutic relationship, establishes trust and plants the first seeds of resilience. It may sound a little cliché but active listening is a very powerful tool when a traumatised individual wants to talk!
If you’d like to know more visit us here or email us mmc@uk.zurich.com
