The moderating role of resilience in the relationship between symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide ideation among firefighters in Türkiye

INTRODUCTION: Given that firefighters are exposed to dangerous and emotionally intense situations, along with the threat of injury or death during their job, they are more likely to experience not only post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms but also the risk of suicide ideation. This study aims to analyze the moderating role of resilience in the relationship between PTSD symptoms and suicide ideation.
METHODS: The purposeful sample in this cross-sectional and correlational study consisted of 316 firefighters. The data were collected with the demographic form, Brief Resilience Scale, Traumatic Stress Symptoms Scale, and the Scale for Suicide Ideation. To analyze the data, a moderator analysis was employed using the SPSS process macro (Model II).
RESULTS: It was concluded that traumatic stress symptoms experienced at elevated levels were related to an increase in suicide ideation (p<0.05). Resilience was not directly effective on suicide ideation (p>0.05). The relationship between traumatic stress symptoms and suicide ideation was significant at low resilience levels (p<0.05) but not significant at medium and high resilience levels (p>0.05).
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: Firefighters with high number of PTDS symptoms present more suicidal ideation especially when presenting lower levels of resilience. Therefore, psychological programs to firefighters must have a strong resilience-building component.