ABSTRACT
An aircraft disaster can be categorized as a type of technological disaster in that it results from failure of manmade products. Following exposure to an aircraft disaster, victims may manifest posttraumatic stress reactions. This chapter reviews existing studies that explore such reactions according to the foregoing victim typology. It presents some descriptions on the literature focusing on crisis interventions and psychological debriefing. It is often difficult to conduct studies of survivors of aircraft accidents, since in many cases the primary victims perish in the event. Despite this fact, researchers have found sufficient numbers of individuals who have not only survived, but are willing to share their thoughts and feelings about these traumatic events. Based on the experience of military aircrew who survived an accident by ejection, 40 percent of the Royal Air Force ejectees developed fits of anger, apprehension, anxiety, transient confusional states, paranoid disturbance, nightmares, flashbacks of the accident, and fear of being entangled in a crashed aircraft.
