Psychology in extremis workshop

Background

The psychology in extremis workshop is delivered as part of Strategic Command’s Empowerment Programme.

Consistent with the aims of the Empowerment Programme, the workshop is designed to supplement your existing knowledge by informing (providing you with access to the best information), coaching (explaining that content) and equipping (providing some practical suggestions) you to make use of the most up to date scientific evidence available on behaviour, performance and health in extreme environments.  

Throughout the workshop we talk about both well-established and progressive and innovative scientific research related to resilience and performance under stress in extreme and high pressure situations and settings. Every effort has been made to ensure this is inclusive and relevant to what you do, and, as a result, hope you feel empowered to use what you learn to positively impact upon your work.

The workshop is split into 6 main parts:

1. Role of individual differences in selection and assessment in high reliability domains

2. Biopsychosocial basis of stress

3. Contemporary perspectives on resilience and thriving

4. Maintaining and monitoring function in deployed environments

5. Working within multi-system & multi-agency teams

6. Post-deployment transition, recovery and readiness

The workshop also includes recommended pre-, mid- and post-course reading and learning materials.

Below are some additional resources to accompany the workshop content. Some of these resources reinforce the content of the workshop and others provide further detail and direction to more reading if you wish. This content is also available in an expanded PDF guidebook.

Approach

The workshop is focused on psychological aspects of function in extremes. However, it is important to note that psychology is part of a broader human factors framework which includes, amongst other areas, physiology and biomechanics and aspects such as equipment design and user interfaces. All of these areas are important for optimising health and performance.

At this point, it is also worth saying that we are not going to focus on aspects related to ill-being (e.g., PTSD). The material is more targeted towards how we can understand and promote experiences of empowerment and thriving. In this respect, we frame our perspective in a so-called positive psychological perspective.

Core reading

There are three core pre-readings that provide a basis for the workshop:

1. A report entitled ‘Performance and coping under stress in security settings’ produced for the Centre for Research Evidence on Security Threats (CREST), which can be accessed here.

   • The report was produced following a workshop delivered to behavioural scientists working in various UK defence, security and law enforcement agencies. It includes insights from world-leading academics and practitioners that have experience both researching and operating in extreme and high-risk settings.

2. A special issue of the CREST Security Review magazine focused on stress-resilience. You can access the magazine here.

   • It would be helpful to read at least the first four articles. The CREST Security Review back catalogue includes a number of additional themed magazines that may be relevant to your work including influence, transitions, decision making, networks and information elicitation. You can explore the CSR back catalogue here.

3. A short infographic article on decision making under stress that can be viewed here.

   • This piece of work highlights some of the contextual demands that we will talk about later in the course.

Selection & Assessment

Selection and assessment is about finding people with the right knowledge, skills, abilities and other relevant characteristics (referred to as KSAO’s) that will allow them to effectively do the job they are being assessed for.

There has been a lot of scientific research on the selection and assessment of high risk personnel (some of it dating back to World War 2), including military and police but also other analogous groups like astronauts and polar expeditioners.

Several years ago, and particularly relevant to the present workshop, NATO published a useful review on the Psychological and Physiological Selection of Military Special Operations Forces Personnel. The report, based on both applied and scientific work, offers an overview of factors that are important during the selection and assessment process.

The following presentation by Dr James Picano focuses on the science underpinning assessment and selection of specialist high risk operational personnel. From around 5 minutes, Picano (a former operational psychologist in the US Army and now at NASA) covers methods of assessment and factors that may distinguish between those who are more or less suitable for high risk roles.

A more detailed discussion of the topics discussed by Picano in the video can be found in the following paper:

Picano, J. J., Roland, R. R., Williams, T. J., & Bartone, P. T. (2017). Assessment of elite operational personnel. In Handbook of Military Psychology (pp. 277-289). Springer, Cham.

Picano’s presentation primarily focuses on individual difference factors that might tell us about a person’s suitability for operating under conditions of stress.

Individual differences

Individual differences are factors that distinguish one person from another. In the past, variations in individual differences have been associated with the likelihood of passing or failing challenging selection courses. Beyond getting through the initial phases of a selection process, these same variables are also linked to important capabilities like receptivity to training, motivation and teamwork.

• Personality: factors such as conscientiousness and emotional stability (low neuroticism) have been linked to effective stress-coping. The extent to which someone is agreeable has also been shown to be important when working in small interdependent teams (teams that rely on each for safety and performance).

• Hardiness: the construct of hardiness includes aspects such commitment, control, and challenge. High scores on hardiness (being committed, perceiving a sense of control and viewing stress as a challenge) seem to differentiate those who are able to perform in stressful situations versus those who are not.

• Verbal defensiveness: a consistent finding when selecting people for high risk occupations is the extent to which they are verbally defensive or not (we might sometimes refer to this as being passive aggressive). Those who are easily spited and demonstrate verbal defensive or aggressive responsiveness tend to be assessed as being less suitable for high stress, high risk occupations.

• Personal values: factors such as self-direction, stimulation, benevolence and hedonism seem to be important for groups that choose to live and work in isolated and extreme settings.

Scientists have recently reviewed existing research on individual difference factors in adaptability to isolated, confined and extreme environments. If you are interested in learning more about this topic you can access the review by following the link in the reference below:

Bartone, P. T., Krueger, G. P., & Bartone, J. V. (2018). Individual differences in adaptability to isolated, confined, and extreme environments. Aerospace medicine and human performance, 89(6), 536-546.

Specific to the military context, new work has focused on the role of individual differences in a concept called ‘mental toughness’. There is some debate amongst scientists about how different mental toughness is from other factors, like facets of conscientiousness (being goal-directed and motivated) and hardiness, and whether it is a stable factor or something more changeable. Nevertheless, recent studies with elite Australian soldiers and parachute regiment recruits in the UK has shown that mental toughness is a contributor to successful completion of challenging assessment and selection courses.

Military mental toughness research has added value over some previous studies due to the fact that it has used external observations of mentally tough behaviours to assess candidates. For example, in one study, mental toughness observations made by directing staff were shown to be valid predictors of performance during a P Company course.

In the prior work, mentally tough behaviour was assessed using the following approach. Directing staff were asked to rate the extent to which recruits were able to maintain a high level of personal performance when confronted with different stressful situations in training including when…

1. His recent performances have been poor

2. He is in pain (e.g., associated with high levels of physical effort).

3. The conditions are difficult (e.g., on exercise).

4. He has been reprimanded/punished

5. He has not had much sleep

6. He is under pressure to perform well (e.g., assessments, test conditions)

DS scored these items for each individual using a 1 - 7 scale and averaged the score to create a total mentally tough behaviour score. These scores predicted overall P Company performance above and beyond standard physical fitness assessments.

As an individual or team leader, it would certainly be possible to adapt this rapid assessment to rate your own and others’ current mental toughness. The benefit of this approach is that the resulting score is more focused on observable factors of an individual’s psychology and has been linked to objective outcomes in terms of overall performance.

Team composition

Some of the more interesting current research on assessment and selection is not related to individual recruitment, but instead, how to compose and coordinate individuals (who are already selected) to work effectively in high-performing teams. The following video by Dr Lauren Landon from NASAs Human Behaviour and Performance Lab discusses some of the considerations for team composition when working with high performing personnel. As you are all members of high performing groups, there may be some similarities to your work.

A more detailed discussion of the topics discussed by Landon in the video can be found in the following paper:

Landon, L. B., Rokholt, C., Slack, K. J., & Pecena, Y. (2017). Selecting astronauts for long-duration exploration missions: Considerations for team performance and functioning. Reach, 5, 33-56.

Leading scientists studying team composition for extremes are currently using machine learning (i.e., artificial intelligence) techniques to model how various surface- and deep-level composition variables might affect team function under stress. One example is the project ‘CREWS’. Surface-level variables are factors that are easily observable like age, sex and height. Deep-level variables are those factors discussed above, such as personality, values and motivation.

There is a bit more information on the role of surface- and deep-level composition variables in this easy read article on ‘group dynamics at the extremes’ and you can learn more about the CREWS research by watching the following short video.

Whilst not everyone has the luxury of being able to select a specific team, when there is a choice, the process of composing teams for extremes is an interesting and potentially mission-critical challenge. This is especially so for longer duration deployments where individuals might be living and working together for an extended period of time.

Although selected individuals might initially work very effectively together, dynamics in team composition are not stable and can fluctuate over time. The linked article by Dr Liv Brown entitled ‘Monitoring changes in cohesion over time in expedition teams: the role of daily events and team composition’ provides novel insight to this issue by looking at day-to-day changes in team function in expedition settings.

If you would like to know more about the science underpinning team dynamics, the paper below by Professor Steve Kozlowski discusses what is currently known about team processes and where more work is needed in the future.

Kozlowski, S. W., & Chao, G. T. (2018). Unpacking team process dynamics and emergent phenomena: Challenges, conceptual advances, and innovative methods. American Psychologist, 73(4), 576.

Stressors and stress

It is important to start by making a distinction between stress and stressors (demands).

Stress refers to an individual’s physiological and psychological response to a stressor (or demand). The stressor causes the stress response, sometimes known as ‘fight or flight’.

The stress response is the way of the body mobilising itself to respond quickly to dangerous situations. In extreme environments, like those that are sometimes encountered by military personnel, there are many different stressors or demands that can lead to a physiological stress response.

Although nowadays the term stress has taken on a negative connotation, the human physiological response to stressors serves an evolutionary function and is implicated in various systems linked to perception, attention and action. These systems would have been critical to our early ancestors’ survival.

In relation to health and performance in the present day, what we are interested in is how we can best utilise and manage the evolutionary stress response to our advantage.

When stress leads to dysfunction, we typically refer to it as distress. In this case, the stress is pathogenic. However, stress can lead to positive outcomes. In this instance, we refer to it as eustress. Eustress is a salutogenic or health-enhancing response.   

One of the unusual aspects of operating in extreme environments is that people are often faced with stressful demands that are not typically encountered in daily life. Sometimes these stressors/demands are chronic and can be experienced over long periods of time. If stress is chronic, and the fight or flight response remains activated and people struggle to relax, this is more likely to result in negative health and performance impacts.

Biopsychosocial processes

There are a number of biological and psychosocial factors that determine the impact that stress has upon health and performance.

Key biological processes

• Heart rate/heart rate variability: increased cardiac output and low HRV hallmarks of stress

• Breathing rate: increased breathing rate an indicator of stress

• Galvanic skin response: measured through electrical conductance on the skin, which results from sweat gland activation

• Hormones: including cortisol, DHEA and oxytocin, amongst others, all play a role in the stress response

• Neurophysiological function: neuropeptides such as Neuropeptide-Y (NPY) and neural activity in the pre-frontal cortex

Key psychosocial processes

• Stress appraisals (challenge and threat): whether the situation is appraised as an opportunity to challenge ones self or is something that is threatening or likely to result in harm

• Control: whether the individual perceives that they are able to directly influence and control the stressful situation

• Self-efficacy: the extent to which the individual believes they have the skills needed to meet/overcome the stressful demands

• Basic psychological need fulfilment: satisfaction of feelings of autonomy (a sense of agency), competence (a sense of effectiveness) and relatedness (a sense of connection to others) are associated with effective performance under pressure

• Social support: whether the individual perceives that they can access support from others and cooperate to cope with the demands

The following podcast with Dr Andy Morgan (Professor of National Security, Forensic Psychiatrist and former CIA intelligence officer) provides a nice bridge between the role of individual differences and the biopsychosocial underpinning of the stress response. In the podcast, Andy talks about his involvement with assessment and selection of elite US military personnel and the research he has done examining the role of both self-reported aspects of psychology, like personality, and biological markers that may predispose someone to be more or less suitable for stressful high risk roles. I would recommend listening to the whole podcast if you are interested in factors associated with performance in elite branches of military, security and law enforcement.

What is resilience?

Resilience is the maintenance or quick recovery of mental health and/or performance during and after exposure to significant stressors and results from a dynamic process of adaptation to stressful life circumstances. Resilience has a biopsychosocial basis (consistent with how we understand stress). That means a person’s physiological and psychological function and social context will contribute to whether they respond resiliently or not.

Resilience is not necessarily a trait or stable personality profile, or a specific genotype or some hard-wired feature of the brain (it’s not like you have it or you don’t). It is also not the flipside of vulnerability.

When referring to stable resilience-conducive traits, like individual differences in personality, or other predispositions these are usually termed “resilience factors” rather than “resilience”. 

In the short clip below, one of the world’s pioneers on resilience research, Professor George Bonnano, provides an insight to the nature and prevlance of resilience following adversity and trauma.

If you want to understand more about the conceptual and theoretical foundations of human resilience, the following article by Bonnano is a good place to start.

Bonnano, G. A. (2004). Loss, Trauma, and Human Resilience: Have we underestimated the human capacity to thrive after extremely adverse events?. American Psychologist, 59(1), 20-28.

A resilience network

Recently, and in keeping with the view that resilience is dynamic, scientists have proposed the idea of a resilience network. This is appealing because it starts to connect a person’s physiological and psychological health and performance.

The components of the resilience network are best understood by identifying the key factors that need to be maintained to safely and successfully complete a task/job role. The following model by Sandal and colleagues, initially proposed for polar and space environments, is instructive for understanding what a resilience network might look like in extremes. Sandal et al., (2006) model includes 4 components:

• Psychological adaptation: refers to changes in factors including physiological biomarkers, stress appraisals, perceived control, self-efficacy and psychological needs.

• Cognitive performance: deals with the higher order brain capacities needed to complete the task, such as working memory, attention and reaction time.

• Health and wellbeing: focuses on affective experiences, emotions and mood states that are conducive for function.

• Group dynamics: refers to the social components of working in a team and the support provided by the group.

The bulleted areas of the model are suggested to be networked and can impact upon one another. As an example, when a person appraises stress as a challenge, this is likely to promote effective cognitive performance, leading to more positive affect, and result in more trusted and cohesive social relationships.

If any of the nodes in the network start to be depleted, for instance there is a breakdown in group dynamics, resilience is demonstrated by isolating and limiting the impact of the breakdown on the remaining factors and quickly returning the affected area node to a normal level of function.

Figure source: Sandal, G. M., Leon, G., & Palinkas, L. (2006). Human challenges in polar and space environments. Environmental Science and Biotechnology, 5, 281- 296.

Team resilience

The resilience of groups and teams is becoming increasingly important.

At the team level, resilience is defined as an emergent outcome (something that develops) that is characterised by the trajectory of a team's functioning, following adversity exposure, as one that is largely unaffected or returns to normal after some degree of deterioration in functioning (Gucciardi et al., 2018). 

Team resilience originates in the resilient function of its individual members. Facilitating individual resilience contributes to team resilience.

Leaders have a critical role to play in establishing norms related to resilience and maximising the contribution of individuals and teams by using their unique resources and skills.

As illustrated below, leaders that provide both appropriate challenge and support to individuals and teams are more likely to foster a facilitative environment that enables resilient function under stress/pressure.

Figure source: Fletcher, D., & Sarkar, M. (2016). Mental-fortitude training: An evidence-based approach to developing psychological resilience for sustained success. Journal of Sport Psychology in Action, 7, 135-157.

The concept of psychological safety has been directly linked to being able to create a facilitative resilience-supportive environment. Below are signs that a psychologically safe environment has been created within a group or team.

How would you answer these questions about your own work environment?

• Can I tell someone they are doing a great job? 

• Can I tell someone they are messing up? 

• Can I raise worries or concerns? 

• Can I ask for help without fear of judgement? 

• Can I take a risk and feel supported? 

• Can I genuinely listen to feedback from others? 

If people can honestly answer yes to these questions, this is a good sign that they feel safe to both succeed and fail. Embedding psychological safety into your work environment is not something that can be done ad hoc but requires commitment to a high performance culture that sees both success and failure as opportunities for learning and development.

What is thriving?

The term thriving is used to refer to a level of functioning that is beyond mere survival or a baseline level of resilience and represents a more optimal physical and psychological state. Thriving is typically considered as the constellation of high performance, subjective vitality and positive affect/emotions/mood. The concept of thriving is closely related to the constructs of peak performance and flow and is associated with high achievement.

Emerging evidence suggests that thriving has a biopsychosocial underpinning and is marked by a number of the factors identified earlier (e.g., lower cortisol, higher DHEA, high psychological need fulfilment).

Brown, D. J., Arnold, R., Standage, M., Turner, J. E., & Fletcher, D. (2020). The prediction of thriving in elite sport: a prospective examination of the role of psychological need satisfaction, challenge appraisal, and salivary biomarkers. Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport.

Whilst resilience may be a desirable outcome, attempts to promote psychological thriving are likely to result in more empowered and optimal function when operating in stressful situations and environments.

Stressful demands

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Figure source: Sandal, G. M., Leon, G., & Palinkas, L. (2006). Human challenges in polar and space environments. Environmental Science and Biotechnology, 5, 281- 296.

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Health & Wellbeing

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Cognitive performance

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1. Sensor-motor ability

2. Visual object learning and memory

3. Attention and working memory

4. Abstraction

5. Spatial orientation

6. Emotion recognition

7. Abstract reasoning

8. Complex scanning and visual tracking

9. Risk decision making

10. Vigilant attention and psychomotor speed

Basner, M., Savitt, A., Moore, T. M., Port, A. M., McGuire, S., Ecker, A. J., ... & Dinges, D. F. (2015). Development and validation of the cognition test battery for spaceflight. Aerospace medicine and human performance, 86(11), 942-952.

Advances in monitoring

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Guk, K., Han, G., Lim, J., Jeong, K., Kang, T., Lim, E. K., & Jung, J. (2019). Evolution of wearable devices with real-time disease monitoring for personalized healthcare. Nanomaterials, 9(6), 813.

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Self-regulation

Acute

Challenge/threat

Video 2 minutes 50

In the interview, Aldo briefly touches on the importance of stress appraisal - this is where you evaluate whether stress is a challenge or a threat. Aldo expands on these ideas in an interview for Sidetracked Magazine here.

Both Aldo and Marc Jones highlight different psychological techniques that can be used to try and foster a sense of control under stress and pressure. These techniques include:

1. Goal-setting

2. Self-talk

3. Imagery

4. Activation control (i.e., breathing/centring)

5. Routines

Chronic demands

Regulatory flexibility

Bonanno, G. A., & Burton, C. L. (2013). Regulatory flexibility: An individual differences perspective on coping and emotion regulation. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8(6), 591-612.

Context sensitivity

Repertoire

Feedback

When operating under conditions of stress, to what extent are you able to…

1. Keep yourself serious and calm

2. Stay focused on your current goals and plans

3. Remind yourself that things will get better

4. Look for a silver lining

5. Try to lessen the experience of painful emotions

6. Keep your schedule and activities as constant as possible

7. Distract yourself to keep from thinking about the demands

8. Find activities to help you keep the demands off your mind

9. Enjoy something that you would normally find funny or amusing

10. Comfort other people

11. Laugh

12. Focus your attention on or care for the needs of other people

13. Pay attention to the distressing feelings that result from the demands

14. Reflect on the meaning of the demands

15. Let yourself fully experience some of the painful emotions linked with the demands

16. Spend time alone

17. Focus on the detail of the stressful demands

18. Face the grim reality head on

19. Reduce your normal social obligations

20. Alter your daily routine

Multi-system teams

Teams are broadly defined as two or more individuals, each with specified roles, working together to pursue a common goal. Teamwork is the way in which team members interact with one another to coordinate actions and complete tasks.

The ability of a team to work effectively is influenced by factors such as: the size of the team, the skillsets and personalities of team members, leadership style, how well team members communicate with one another, and the level of team cohesion. Teamwork is also influenced by contextual factors, such as time pressure, risk and uncertainty.

Teamwork can be especially challenging when working in highly stressful contexts. Team communication tends to suffer, team members can be less likely to accept support from one another, and individual differences can be exaggerated leading to increased team tensions.

The defence and security context often requires multiple different teams from various organisations and backgrounds to work together in what is referred to as a multi-team system. A multi-team system, comprises a network of teams and sub teams, working to achieve separate, but related goals, in the context of over-arching shared system goals.

Tension, displacement and groupthink

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Communication

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Clearly identify ‘Boundary Spanners’: staff who can operate between teams and ensure that all teams within the system remain aware of the activities of other teams. In a rapidly evolving crisis, we can expect to see near daily changes to procedural guidelines and advice for safe practice. Inter-agency partners must be kept in the loop.

During periods of intense pressure team members have a tendency to focus on communicating within rather than between agencies. When working across agencies or in distributed teams it is important to maintain communication with partners, especially during these intense periods. It is also important to avoid agency-specific jargon or acronyms to ensure that communication is clear.

The following podcast on communications from the Mission Critical Team Institute provides a a nice insight to the topic.

Trust and Rapport

Stacey Conchie

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Decision making

In high pressure situations, like those that might be encountered by defence and security personnel, contextual demands may lead to what is known as decision inertia or failures to act. In the next video, Professor Laurence Alison, provides an insight to what he and his colleagues have learnt about decision making in extreme teams.

Redundant deliberation and the decision inertia that follow is more likely to occur when there is no standard policy to guide decision-makers, or, as might be the case in extreme situations, when normal practices and policies might not fit the actual circumstances faced.

Factors that can reduce the likelihood of redundant deliberation and decision inertia include:

• Know who has decision making responsibility in the team

• Encouraging quick-thinking and creative, adaptive and imaginative approaches to problem-solving that may not rely on policies and procedures not tailored to the unique situation.

• Using scenario-centred discussions involving individuals and entire teams to run through what-if situations enabling solutions to be identified ahead of time. This reduces the need to think about the choice once the situation occurs.

• Making sure individuals understand how their values might impact upon their decision making so that this can be addressed before getting into high pressure situations.

• Focusing on the goal, rather than the decision. This requires commitment from team members to work towards the same goal.

• Determining the immediacy of decisions and prioritising the ones that are most important ‘now’.

• Using rapid debriefs to capture errors and near misses and have a way of logging those lessons.  

Issues of redundant deliberation, decision inertia and least worst decision making are discussed in more detail in the excellent book entitled ‘Conflict: How soldiers make impossible decisions’.

Shortland, N. D., Alison, L. J., & Moran, J. M. (2019). Conflict: How soldiers make impossible decisions. Oxford University Press.

Debriefing

A characteristic of high performing teams is their use of debriefs. Fundamentally a debrief is a form of learning in which a team uses a process of reflection and planning to improve what they do.

These are sometimes known as ‘after-action’ or ‘lessons learnt’ reviews and are commonly used in military, emergency medicine and other high-pressure settings.

Findings from a 2013 review and meta-analysis suggest that when conducted correctly, debriefs can lead to a 20-25% improvement in team performance. This is based on an average debrief length of just 18 minutes.

Essential elements of a debrief are:

• Active self-learning: to be considered a debrief there must be some form of active self-learning or discovery. Simply being given feedback is not a debrief.  

• Developmental intent: debriefs focus on how to improve rather than evaluating or judging.

• Specificity: focusing on specific activities, episodes and events rather than general performance or competency is important.

• Multiple inputs: there must be multiple sources of information fed into the debrief to allow for diversity of viewpoints and perspective. 

Returning from extremes

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1. I felt glad that I went on the expedition.

2. I felt closer to my family.

3. Putting the events of the expedition behind me was tough.

4. There was tension in my family relationships.

5. I found my work environment more frustrating.

6. I was more aware of problems in the world.

7. I was able to apply job-related skills I learned during my expedition.

8. I became more responsive to my family’s needs.

9. I had difficulty reconciling what I experienced on expedition with life at home.

10. I was better able to deal with stress.

11. I felt the expedition had a negative impact on my personal life.

12. I felt my current work duties were less meaningful.

13. I became more involved in my family relationships.

14. I had a better understanding of other cultures.

15. I felt my family had difficulty understanding me.

16. I felt confused about my experiences during the expedition.

17. Day to Day work tasks seemed tedious.

18. The expedition put a strain on my family life.

19. I realised how well off we are at home.

20. I felt I was better at my job.

21. It was hard to get used to being at home again.

22. Work life was boring.

23. I realised how important my family was to me.

24. I had a greater appreciation of the value of life.

25. Getting back “into sync” with family life was hard.

26. Being back at home was a bit of a culture shock.

27. I was proud of having gone on expedition.

28. I had a greater willingness to be with my family.

29. I had a greater appreciation of the conveniences taken for granted at home.

30. I felt a lower sense of accomplishment at work.

31. I felt my family resented my absence.

32. I considered leaving my job.

33. I more fully appreciated the rights and freedoms taken for granted at home.

34. I felt I had developed stronger friendships.

35. Focusing on things other than the expedition was difficult.

36. I more fully appreciated the time I spent with my family.

Blais, A. R., Thompson, M. M., & McCreary, D. R. (2009). The development and validation of the army post-deployment reintegration scale. Military Psychology, 21(3), 365-386.

Stress-recovery

Trauma less problematic

Readiness

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Buick, F., & Pickering, D. I. (2013). A framework for appraising individual readiness for deployment. Technical memorandum for the Defence R&D Canada.

Readiness self-assessment

1. I am prepared to go on an expedition or remote fieldwork deployment.

2. My family and/or friends would support my participation in an expedition or remote fieldwork deployment.

3. My supervisors and coworkers would support my participation in an expedition or remote fieldwork deployment.

4. I am confident in my ability to effectively prepare for an expedition or remote fieldwork deployment.

5. I am confident in my ability to meet all of the logistical demands of an expedition or remote fieldwork deployment.

6. I am confident in my ability to accomplish all tasks expected of me during an expedition or remote fieldwork deployment.

7. I am confident in my ability to manage stress during an expedition or remote fieldwork deployment.

8. I am confident that I would know how to access mental health support whilst on an expedition or remote fieldwork deployment.

9. I feel prepared to deal with unexpected situations that might occur during an expedition or remote fieldwork deployment.

10. If an opportunity was to arise in the next 3 months, and I was asked to go on an expedition or remote fieldwork deployment, I would be ready to go.

Zagelbaum, N. K., Heslin, K. C., Stein, J. A., Ruzek, J., Smith, R. E., Nyugen, T., & Dobalian, A. (2014). Factors influencing readiness to deploy in disaster response: findings from a cross-sectional survey of the Department of Veterans Affairs Disaster Emergency Medical Personnel System. BMC emergency medicine, 14(1), 16.

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Reading list

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