Five Factors to Strengthen Resilience

How can these five factors together strengthen the resilience of a diver after a diving incident/accident?

Please consider the flow chart showing the different stages for the provision of acute medical and mental care. Before starting with mental care, a diver care-provider, a buddy or a family member should make sure that all acute medical needs have been resolved or are under control.

(1) The first step in mental care is to recognise the mental needs after a diving incident/accident. Some examples of mental needs are: the affected person may need to get the event out into the open, have questions about the incident/accident, suffer from guilt feelings.

Here, we can distinguish between two forms of mental care: acute psychosocial care (2). This is care in which the accent is placed upon the interaction between the behaviour of a person and response to their environment. The second form of mental care is psychosocial support (3). This is support with the psychological and emotional consequences, and the social consequences (family relatives, relationships, work) following a diving accident.

One important added value of the model is that it can be carried out by non-professional care providers, such as in our case: the buddy, the diving first-aider, another diver, family or friends. If persistent complaints continue, such care-provider may, with the approval of the affected person, refer him/her to the mental coaching team.