Disaster victim identification: UK practitioners’ experiences and wellbeing

Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) is a process that follows Mass Fatality Incidents including earthquakes, tsunamis, and large-scale terrorist attacks. It comprises a team deployed to collect and identify victims and return physical remains to their families. Extant research on the wellbeing and resilience of those who work in this vital process is at best ‘emergent’ and at worst ‘neglected’. This paper explores how DVI can negatively affect the wellbeing of those working within it, how they deal/cope with these effects, and how they build and maintain emotional, psychological, and physical resilience. An exploratory constructionist grounded theory approach was adopted to facilitate a deeper understanding of the experiences of those involved, comprising 25 semi-structured interviews conducted with individuals either working in DVI or who had recently retired. Participants performed a variety of different DVI roles and duties. A thematic analysis was conducted which resulted in six themes: the motivations for volunteering, personal rewards that working in DVI brings, the true nature of deployment, self-awareness about the effects of DVI on their own psychological, emotional, and physical wellbeing, and common coping strategies employed to deal with any negative impacts on personal wellbeing. The paper presents a proposed model for DVI wellbeing that highlights important risks and protections identified in the study for practitioners’ wellbeing. It concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings for DVI practice and wellbeing.