摘要：Firefighters are a relevant population to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health for several reasons: On the one hand, firefighters, often acting as first responders, are more exposed to highly stressful situations and therefore may be more vulnerable to deteriorating mental health during the pandemic. On the other hand, firefighters may depict increased resilience in the face of potentially traumatic events given their experience in dealing with them in their occupational activities. The present study aims to explore underlying classes of stress-related symptomatology, namely posttraumatic stress (PTS) and depressive (DEP) symptoms in Dutch firefighters. Furthermore, we want to test if classes are predicted by factors related to the pandemic (e.g., loneliness) and pre-pandemic symptom levels assessed prior to the pandemic. Method: This research is part of an ongoing longitudinal study examining stress and resilience trajectories in a Dutch firefighter cohort. Selfreport and interview-based data were collected in N = 150 firefighters pre-pandemic (in Sep 2019) and during the pandemic (May-Sep 2020). The latent class analysis will be employed. As a first step, we will explore latent classes based on interview-based PTS and DEP symptoms assessed during the pandemic. Secondly, it will be tested whether pre-pandemic stress symptomatology and current self-reported levels of pandemic-related factors predict the extracted latent classes. Results: Results and the implications of the findings will be presented at the conference. Conclusions: Extracting latent classes within longitudinal stress research can help identify vulnerable subgroups and inform mental health policies specially targeted towards first responders during a pandemic.
