Post-traumatic stress

Terrorist attacks have a profound and lasting psychological impact on exposed civilians and first responders, particularly on civilians who were directly threatened or have lost loved ones, but also on bystanders and family members.

Our Missions

  • Monitoring the psychological and traumatic impact of terrorist acts

  • Providing useful information to improve care

  • Providing information on psychological trauma, its progression, and its determinants

The PROTECT Project

The international PROTECT research project draws on data from studies conducted in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Norway (Utøya, 2011) and France (Paris, 2015).

In this article

Background

Traumatic events such as terrorist attacks affect a large number of people worldwide and have devastating consequences for individuals, families, and societies. Unmet healthcare needs are commonly reported. There is an urgent need to coordinate efforts to strengthen healthcare awareness among affected individuals and communities.
The unpredictability and devastating effects of terrorist attacks make it very difficult to conduct high-quality research in the aftermath of such events. PROTECT (Prospective Research On Terrorist Events and Collective Trauma) is an international research project based on data from studies conducted following the terrorist attacks in Norway (Utøya, 2011) and France (Paris, 2015).
The data generated by PROTECT allow for a comparison over time (data before and after the attacks) and across geographic regions (France and Norway) of healthcare utilization and medication prescriptions among both those directly affected by the attacks and the general population in these two countries.

Objective

The overall objective of the PROTECT study is to provide insights to improve the preparedness and response of health services to terrorist attacks and disasters.

The primary objective of the proposed project is to generate knowledge that will improve the preparedness, resilience, and response of health services to terrorist attacks and other disasters. Another objective is to develop a robust new research methodology that enables international comparisons of health care delivery in the context of trauma.

More specific secondary objectives are to examine the direct and indirect impact of exposure to a terrorist attack on: (a) the use of primary and specialized mental and somatic health services, (b) medication prescriptions.

Additional information

PROTECT is funded by the Research Council of Norway. The project is led by the NKVTS (Norwegian Centre for Violence and Traumatic Stress Studies) and conducted in collaboration with NTNU (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway), the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm), and Santé publique France
https://www.nkvts.no/english/project/protect/

Text written by Dr. Lise Eilin Stene, principal investigator of the PROTECT project, Norwegian Centre for Violence and Traumatic Stress Studies (NKVTS)