With respect to your comments, I can tell you that, of the excellent studies conducted on debriefing, one or two also dealt with firefighters.
I am aware of the situation as regards firefighters because I have met some. In fact, I met with representatives of the Montreal Area Firefighters Association last summer. What came out of that meeting with fire chiefs was that it is generally greatly appreciated. On the other hand, the fire chiefs also told me about some of the negative aspects of debriefing, namely that when these sessions took place, there were sometimes fairly negative comments made by colleagues who blamed certain individuals for their actions. They talked about that specific problem.
Having said that, I don't want to go into too much detail about this. However, I do want to say that we have not yet properly measured all the potential effects of debriefing and that if we are able to measure such things as quality of life or happiness, for example, we may get some results. At the present time, however, we do know that it does not prevent the onset of PTSD.
At the same time, it is important not to overlook the fact that human beings have tremendous resilience. It's important to remember that even when faced with an event that evokes strong feelings of aversion and that is potentially extremely traumatic—such as seeing a colleague die—the vast majority of human beings come out of it unharmed. In fact, 90% of people come out of it without psychological or psychopathological aftereffects.
I just wanted to emphasize that human beings are extremely resilient.