Prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder in bus drivers

Many recent reports indicate that public transport employees constitute a group of workers at high risk of going through a traumatic event. Yet, very few scientific data on the impact of these events on this population are available. The authors present results of an epidemiological study conducted among Montreal bus drivers. A little more than a third of bus drivers have reported a traumatic event at work. Among the whole of traumatic events occurring during the course of their work, serious threats and assault constitute the majority of these events. Traumatic events are more frequent at work than in their private lives. The prevalence of PTSD for those exposed to a traumatic event at work is of 10.7% and of 21.3% for those bus drivers exposed to traumatic events in their private lives. Nine out of 100 drivers exposed to a traumatic event at work suffered a PTSD in the month preceding the study. When the authors consider the events occurring in the private lives, almost 15% of those exposed were victims of PTSD. When the two levels of expositions are reunited, 12% of those exposed presented a PTSD in the month preceding the research. Language: fr