The psychological effects of widespread emergencies and a first responder training course on a violent, developing community

Background: Most of the world’s trauma-related deaths are borne by developing countries in the pre-hospital setting, with trauma mortality rates over double than those in developed nations and predictions that the situation will get even worse. However, very little is reported about how community members in these settings feel about the violence and emergencies themselves. We aimed to catalogue how community members in one area felt about emergencies and emergency personnel, and how they would psychologically respond to first responder training, a possible intervention to relieve community stress. Methods: The Emergency First Aid Responder training course was taught to community members in the Cape Flats region of Cape Town, South Africa. We administered before and after surveys that asked questions about emergencies, emergency personnel, likeliness to help in an emergency (initiative), confidence in helping skills, and in feelings about the training course. Findings: The community members felt very negative about emergencies in their area, and most residents feel that emergency personnel are not doing their job adequately. Lack of ability to help is the most prevalent and largest barrier to help during an emergency, and the course was the most effective at addressing this barrier. Conclusion: Violence and emergencies are having a deep, negative impact on the psychology of the Cape Flats’ community members. First responder training is one intervention that can provide stress relief to the community, increase the likeliness community members will help each other during an emergency, and increase their confidence while helping. This was true even for those who were not trained voluntarily, and the more a trainee learned in the course the more likely they improved in initiative and confidence