Mental Health Survey And Intervention For Navy Aircraft Maintenance Crews

Background:To guarantee the safety of flight in navy aircraft forces is of great importance. However, the navy aircraft maintenance crews are in high risk of having mental stress because of the work. They work under high temperature, high humidity as well as heavy noise. It is easier for them to have mental disorders, such as depression and anxiety. Evaluating mental health level and then intervening the mental stress, will be helpful to the mental and physical health of the crew and to improve their combat effectiveness.Objective:This study intends to investigate mental health state of the navy aircraft maintenance crew, and provide psychological intervention to them. Also, the effect of the intervention will be explored. This study will provide the guidelines for developing psychological intervention, releasing the stress and improving the mental health status.Methods:Stress Reaction Questionnaire, life event scale, Perceived Social Support Scale, Trait Coping Style Questionnaire were used to survey mental health state of240navy aircraft maintenance crew and120support staff whose working environment was relatively quiet.240navy aircraft maintenance crew who were willing to participate in the mental health interventions were recruited, and they were randomly divided into experimental group and control group. The experimental group underwent mental health intervention for one year, and the control group accepted conventional ideological and political education just at the same time. Before and after the experiment, we measured the two groups with the same scales.Results:The navy aircraft maintenance crew group got higher scores in the total scores of SRQ, physical response and social withdrawal behaviors than support staff group obviously(P<0.001). Differences of the emotional response between the two groups were not significant. The navy aircraft maintenance crew group got higher scores than support staff group in total scores of LES, family, work and study significantly(P<0.001or P＜0.05), differences of the remaining subscale were not statistically significant. There were significant differences on the total score of PSSS between navy aircraft maintenance crew group and support staff group (P＜0.05), the differences of the subscales between the two groups were not statistically significant. The score of navy aircraft maintenance crew group in negative coping was significant higher than support staff group and in positive coping was significant lower than support staff group (P<0.001).After mental health intervention, score of dimensions of SRQ and the total score, the negative coping score of TCSQ for experimental group were significant lower than control group(P<0.001). The positive coping score of TCSQ for experimental group were significant higher than control group (P<0.001).The total score of LES(P<0.01), the score of family(P<0.01), work and study(P<0.05), and other reasons(P<0.01) of LES for experimental group were significant lower than control group. The total score of PSSS(P＜0.01), the score of within family(P<0.05), and out of family(P<0.01) of LES for experimental group were significant higher than control group.Conclusion:Navy aircraft maintenance crew have poorer mental health status than support staff, mainly including more psychological stress (body reaction and withdrawal behaviors), poor understanding of social support, negative coping to life events. Psychological intervention can release psychological stress, which improves coping styles of navy aircraft maintenance crew and thus makes it more positive for them to conquer psychological obstacles or relevant diseases. Therefore, it is necessary to give psychological intervention to enhance the capability and comprehension quality of navy aircraft maintenance ground crew, and improve our army’s battle forces and ensure flight safety.