PSY2022 Project: Qualitative Study of Bus Crash Survivors' Experiences

This project, undertaken as part of PSY2022, investigates the profound psychological impact of major bus crashes on survivors. Drawing upon a qualitative study, the project examines the experiences of individuals who have endured such traumatic events, focusing on the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the disruption to their daily lives. The research explores the range of emotions, thoughts, and behaviors exhibited by survivors, including feelings of shock, anger, guilt, and fear, as well as difficulties with sleep and memory. The study highlights the critical role of social support and professional counseling in mitigating the effects of trauma and facilitating recovery. The project emphasizes the long-term consequences of these events, including potential personality changes, substance abuse, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, underscoring the need for comprehensive mental health support for survivors. The project also addresses the impact of physical injuries, the challenges survivors face in daily activities, and the exacerbation of health conditions due to stress. The study references relevant literature to support its findings and emphasizes the importance of understanding the long-term effects of trauma following a major bus crash.

Running head: PSY2022 WEEK 4 PROJECT
PSY2022 WEEK 4 PROJECT
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Author’s Note

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Impact on life after a major bus crash–a qualitative study of survivors’
experiences
The main objective of this paper is to understand about the effects of stress, with the help
of the article Impact on life after a major bus crash–a qualitative study of survivors’ experiences
(Doohan & Saveman, 2014), which occurs, when one faces a sudden and unanticipated event in
their life. The stress, which occurs after an accident or non-normative event, is termed as post-
traumatic stress, and the individual suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (Edmondson &
Cohen, 2013).
Arrival of the accidents is unknown; it is the uncertainty of life. Individual experiencing
accidents have a severe impact on their life and their level of stress. Accidents like bus crashes,
has the ability to severely affect a large number of individuals. The frequency of bus crashes is
high, because of the amount of buses present on the streets on daily basis. Apart from the
physical injuries, the survivors also experiences the signs of depression and distress. The
psychological functioning of a survivor is immensely disturbed, causing disruption in mental
health leading to increased amount of stress (Resick, 2014). The survivor experiences many
emotions like sadness, nightmares and avoidance after any accident. These emotions are
sometimes everlasting because of the fear of being so close to death, disrupt the mental well-
being and create a havoc of stress in the individual. It has been observed that the survivors
develop post-traumatic stress disorder after been exposed to a disaster and the main reason
behind the stress if the dissociation and the peritrauma fear (Doohan & Saveman, 2014). Apart
from the stress disorder, the impact of disaster or accident also results in developing severe
health consequences like grief and suicidal reactions (Doka, 2014). The paper focuses on the

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importance of the post-traumatic stress, which an individual faces after a sudden and
unanticipated event.
Methodologies
In order to understand the intensity of the stress, one is facing after an accident; certain
surveys can be conducted with the other survivors of the crash, to have a qualitative knowledge.
In a bus crash, many passengers suffered from the physical injuries, some were dead and there
were individuals, who were not physically injured but were in extreme post-traumatic stress
(Doohan & Saveman, 2014). Efficient amount of data were collected maintain the ethical
principles, in order to gather information about the levels of stress. From the data collected, the
results were analyzed.
Impact of Stress
The survivors explicitly shared a number of emotions, thoughts, actions and feelings,
which they felt during the crash. The disaster resulted in disrupting and altering the survivor’s
daily activities. For the survivors with physical injuries, the accident ghastly affected their lives.
The survivors with no physical injuries experience high intensity of stress and trauma (Resick,
2014). Even after the supply of healthcare treatment, the survivors were not able to get back in
their normal state; they were constantly thinking about the accident, they were not able to come
out of the shocking and life threatening experience of the accident. Some survivors even faced
difficulties while sleeping (Haagsma et al., 2015), as the thought of the accident does not leave
their mind and keep on disrupting the mental ability to function properly.

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The survivors after the accident were in dismay; they were not able to figure out what just
happened with them. Survivors seeing the injured and dead individuals in front of their eyes
resulted in putting them under acute stress and severe depression (Sneddon, Mearns & Flin,
2013). They were feeling numb, as if the world has stopped rotating, time is not moving, and
everything has come to an end. After few seconds of the accident, the survivors realized what
just happened with them (Doka, 2014) and the first thing they did was to call their loved ones
and inform them about the whole incident. They expressed the feelings of being blocked and
being in a vacuum displaying the irrational behavior. The survivors, who were fine, disregard of
their stress levels, began to help others with the assistance of the spectators of the accident.
Survivors tried to help the other passengers who were brutally injured and traumatized with the
help of the rescue team, which arrived for help. Apart from the negative aspects of the accident,
the survivors were feeling comfortable because of the needful like blankets, medicines, water
and many more, provided by the rescue team.
However, the help from rescue team helped the survivors, but the post-traumatic stress of
the accident resulted in effecting the health of the survivors severely (Peterson, Prout & Schwarz,
2013). The feelings of shock, anger, guilt, nervousness, fear and the trouble in believing the
reality constituted in the health of survivors. The post-traumatic stress resulted in increasing the
risks of cardio vascular disease among the survivors because of the increased heartbeats and
high blood pressures. Even after some days of the accident, the stress levels are not easily
reduced, the stress results in leaving a mark of fear in the survivors, which they feels every time
they are doing something, which is relevant to the accident. They often feel uninterested, numb,
helpless, difficulty in recalling the accident event, violent, anxious and have flashbacks due to
which they face trouble in sleeping (Haagsma et al., 2015). The major impact of these sudden

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and unanticipated events on an individual, apart from the physical injuries is the disruption of
mental peace, which often results in depression.
The post-traumatic stress causes difficulty in healing after the accident or disaster or any
sudden unanticipated event. Even after getting support from the families and friends, the survivor
faces difficulty in talking about the event, as it refreshes their tragic incident and putting them
into the same scenario, which they faced. Another way stress affects the life of a survivor is
facing challenges in performing everyday activities and travelling. As the accidents are highly
unanticipated, the survivors have the feeling of fear, every time they travel. They experience the
horror throughout their travelling journey, by just a minor flinching of the bus. The probability of
the occurrence of accidents is exponentially increased in their minds because of the fear of
getting into another accident and the fear of losing their life. After being so close to death, the
stress levels of survivors of getting another such encounter with death, makes it difficult for them
to heal from the accident and move on in their life, regardless of the negativity and uncertainty of
the accidents or any unanticipated events (Victoria & Murphy, 2016). In addition, after knowing
the cause of the accident, they constantly relate the cause to everyday activities, which adversely
affected their psychological well-being. The prevalence of acute and chronic stress exacerbated
many health conditions like back pain, hypertension, increased blood pressure, irritable bowel
syndrome, difficulty in breathing, increased heartbeat rate, blood glucose levels fluctuations and
many severe conditions among the survivors (Cohen, Edmondson & Kronish, 2015).
The major support for the survivors apart from the effective medications were the support
from their peers, which helped them to lower down the stress levels and helped them to move on
with their life. Without the assistance from the peers, any individual might get into coma because
of the stress and depression levels, and thus being scarred throughout from life. Thus, the peers

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play a vital role in undermining the impact of stress among individuals. Effective medications
and professional counseling can also help in reducing the stress levels, as it will help the
survivors to calm their nerves and mental peace, and assist them to move on with their life
(Victoria & Murphy, 2016). Certain therapies like relational therapy, play therapy,
psychotherapy, exposure therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy and group therapy are also
considered as effective treatment in reducing the post-traumatic stress levels (Bisson et al.,
2013). Although, till date, there is no effective medicine to completely cure the post-traumatic
stress disorder, but it is believed that symptoms go away with time. The major changes, which
the peers notice in their known individual suffering from post-traumatic stress is the change in
personality (personality disorder), depression, substance addiction and obsessive compulsive
disorder(OCD) (Trimble, 2013).

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References
Bisson, J. I., Roberts, N. P., Andrew, M., Cooper, R., & Lewis, C. (2013). Psychological
therapies for chronic post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in adults. Cochrane Database
of Systematic Reviews, (12).
Cohen, B. E., Edmondson, D., & Kronish, I. M. (2015). State of the art review: depression,
stress, anxiety, and cardiovascular disease. American journal of hypertension, 28(11),
1295-1302.
Doka, K. J. (2014). Living with grief: After sudden loss suicide, homicide, accident, heart attack,
stroke. Taylor & Francis.
Doohan, I., & Saveman, B. I. (2014). Impact on life after a major bus crash–a qualitative study of
survivors' experiences. Scandinavian journal of caring sciences, 28(1), 155-163.
Edmondson, D., & Cohen, B. E. (2013). Posttraumatic stress disorder and cardiovascular disease.
Progress in cardiovascular diseases, 55(6), 548-556.
Haagsma, J. A., Scholten, A. C., Andriessen, T. M., Vos, P. E., Van Beeck, E. F., & Polinder, S.
(2015). Impact of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder on functional outcome
and health-related quality of life of patients with mild traumatic brain injury. Journal of
neurotrauma, 32(11), 853-862.
Peterson, K. C., Prout, M. F., & Schwarz, R. A. (2013). Post-traumatic stress disorder: A
clinician’s guide. Springer Science & Business Media.
Resick, P. A. (2014). Stress and trauma. Psychology Press.

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Sneddon, A., Mearns, K., & Flin, R. (2013). Stress, fatigue, situation awareness and safety in
offshore drilling crews. Safety Science, 56, 80-88.
Trimble, M. R. (2013). Post-traumatic stress disorder: History of a concept. In Trauma and its
wake (pp. 31-39). Routledge.
Victoria, N. C., & Murphy, A. Z. (2016). The long-term impact of early life pain on adult
responses to anxiety and stress: historical perspectives and empirical evidence.
Experimental neurology, 275, 261-273.