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Workforce & wellbeing
Resilience predicts paramedic mental health symptoms
Psychosocial predictors of mental health outcomes in different groups of emergency responders: implications for tailored support systems
Journal of Psychiatric Research · Added 27 July 2026
This study provides important insights into the mental health challenges faced by emergency service workers (ESWs), including paramedics, firefighters, and emergency medical dispatchers (EMDs).
- Study type
- Cross-sectional
- Design
- Cross-sectional survey with regression analysis
- Participants
- 686 trainee paramedics, firefighters and EMDs from three Australian organisations
- Main finding
- Higher resilience correlated with fewer symptoms (depression β=-.28, anxiety β=-.28, stress β=-.27, all p<.001); social support predicted depression (β=-.19); in EMDs trauma exposure predicted somatic symptoms (β=.22)
- Caveat
- Cross-sectional trainee sample, cannot establish causality
- Bottom line
- Context only
Learning goal
Understand how resilience and social support shape mental health across Australian emergency responder roles.
More
- Topic: Workforce & wellbeing
- Daily scan: 27 July 2026
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