Traumatic Stress of a Wartime Mortuary

Exposure to traumatic death is a risk factor for posttraumatic stress disorder. For some groups, anticipation of such exposure may contribute to traumatic stress. We studied the anticipated stress of working in the Operation Desert Storm mortuary in two groups prior to the arrival of the dead. We examined those who would handle remains (mortuary workers, N = 386, 330 men and 56 women) and those who would not (support workers, N = 87, 67 men and 20 women). These two groups were a mixture of volunteers and nonvolunteers as well as persons with and without experience in handling the dead. The mortuary workers had higher levels of preexposure distress than support workers; nonvolunteer mortuary workers had higher levels of distress than volunteers. Female mortuary workers had higher levels of distress than males, although this effect was modest. Experienced mortuary workers reported fewer intrusive and avoidant symptoms than did inexperienced workers. Those persons at highest risk for generalized distress as well as intrusive and avoidant symptoms were inexperienced nonvolunteer mortuary workers.