Keywords

firefighters, first responders, allostatic load, behavioral health, physical health

Abstract

Firefighters (FFs) exhibit a multitude of behavioral and physical health concerns as well as fluctuating social support due to their occupation. Despite the fire service enacting preventative approaches to health and wellness, FFs still report increased prevalences of health concerns at the end of their career. Firefighter syndrome was created to identify FFs in need of medical care (e.g., behavioral and physical health services, Frueh et al., 2022b). The purpose of this study is to validate the construct of FF Syndrome by using statistical classification techniques to investigate whether there is a latent group of firefighters that have the symptoms associated with the construct. Discriminant function analyses (DFA) examined how well career FFs can be identified using the FF syndrome questionnaire (FSQ) compared to other behavioral health concerns (e.g., depression, PTSD, anxiety, and somatic symptoms). Latent Class Analyses (LCA) examined various classes of responding on the FSQ to identify a potential FF syndrome class. The DFA violated assumptions of normality and homogeneity of variance and was not conducted. The LCA indicated that a three-class solution best fits the data (AIC = 9742, BIC = 10344, Entropy = 96.0, and X2 = 2.94e+11, p < .001). Years of experience were modestly associated with the subclinical class (β = -0.113, p = .008) as compared to the nominal class. Participants in the subclinical and firefighter syndrome classes endorsed experiencing sleep disturbance, obstructive sleep apnea, hypervigilance, and chronic pain. All three classes endorsed experiencing exposure to toxic chemicals. The LCA indicated that there are classes of FFs who experience negative global impacts on their health, providing preliminary construct validation of FF syndrome. Further research is needed to develop more integrated healthcare prevention methods and interventions to address the overlapping physical and behavioral health concerns of FFs to promote occupational readiness and career well-being.

Completion Date

2025

Semester

Fall

Committee Chair

Clint Bowers

Degree

Master of Science (M.S.)

College

College of Sciences

Department

Psychology

Format

PDF

Identifier

DP0029778

Document Type

Thesis

Campus Location

Orlando (Main) Campus

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