Study On The Effect Of Parachuting Training On Paratroopers' Psychological Health Status And Its Related Risk Factors

In order to study the changing pattern of the psychological health status of paratroopers through the whole process of parachuting training and its related risk factors and provide some advices on the psychological care work of airborne troops, the psychological health status in 488 newly recruited paratroopers were repeatedly measured at 5 time points (the day just before training, the evening just before their first parachuting, the evening just after their first parachuting, the evening just before their fourth parachuting, the evening just after their final (eighth) parachuting) by using questionnaires including Symptom Check List 90(SCL-90) and some other self-designed possible risk factors such as their information of demography , social function, coping style, etc. The psychological status in 220 veterans who had fulfilled the same training a year before and then took part in the regular work in the same troops and the change of the psychological status in 151 officers at previous training and post training who fulfilled the similar training were measured too.The results showed: 1.The changing pattern: the total score of SCL-90 in new recruits rose during the first time span and reached the maximum just before their first parachuting, thenbegan to decline and dropped to the minimum just after their final parachuting, which was still higher than that at the first time point. Meanwhile this trend was observed to happen in the scores changed by nine sub-scale of SCL-90. 2. The scores just after their final parachuting were significantly lower compared with all SCL-90 scores of 151 veterans. It was learnt that the parachuting training damaged the psychological health status of the paratroopers and their mental health status ran worst just before the first parachuting. Owing to the absence of psychological rehabilitation and plenty of psychological stress sources, their psychological health became deteriorated after the training. 3.The change of total score through the whole process among the officers was higher than that of the new recruits due to their different experience and knowledge. 4. Eight related risk factors of the damage were discovered by using multiple regressive analysis. They were the troops' accommodation, the training effect, smoking, family support, their relation with accompaniers, the strictness of administration, the cause of their joining the army, the interest on the parachuting (ranked by their impact on the damage from strong to weak). It was suggested that the damage was affected by a lot of physiological, psychological, social factors, to which the paratroopers' views on the living condition and the administration of the troops predominantly contributed. The following suggestions on the work of psychological health care in the troops deserve our further considering based on our research: 1. to adopt some pertinent psychological intervention measures actively and to establish a center for psychological health with professionals to conduct psychological consultation for all parachuting trainees during the whole process of parachuting training; 2.to raise the paratroopers' ability to resist the damage through more health education; 3. to change theimproper administrative methods to satisfy the paratroopers; 4. to improve the paratroopers' psychological health status through sufficient mental rehabilitative measures and mental consultation after training.