Rescue workers (policemen, firefighters, emergency medical staff, etc.) experience intense stress due to rescuing and helping victims of accidents, terrorist attacks, violent crimes, and natural disasters. Overexposure and ineffective coping with such stressful events may lead to developing Post‐Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Meta‐regression procedures were applied to examine moderators such as the sample sex composition, age, working experience, occupation, country, or type of PTSD evaluation. The 9.8% PTSD prevalence found here was virtually the same compared with earlier findings from 10 years ago. There was a large heterogeneity, however, associated with geographical location and the instrument used to evaluate PTSD. The main findings revealed that rescue workers are a high‐risk group with increased levels of Post‐traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Moreover, PTSD prevalence could depend on a great extent on geographical and cultural factors, and on the type of PTSD evaluation.

The relationship between empathy and aggression is inconclusive, with substantial evidence revealing moderator effects of factors such as age, sex, and personality. This study examines whether sex differences or sex similarities stem from the relationship between empathy, personality, and aggression. There were 197 adolescents enrolled in secondary education (89 males and 108 females), who completed the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ), and the Buss and Perry Aggression Questionnaire (BPAQ). Females scored higher than males in empathy factors (fantasy, empathic concern, and personal distress), neuroticism, and in aggression (anger and hostility). Males and females showed similar outcomes in the association between perspective taking and personal distress with anger and hostility. Extraversion and neuroticism failed to explain additional variance in instrumental aggression (physical and verbal). Neuroticism, however, explained a meaningful larger amount of variance in the affective and cognitive components of aggression beyond empathy measures for both males and females, anger (9%) and hostility (15%), respectively. The findings suggest that, regardless of sex, empathy appears important for instrumental aggression (physical, verbal), whereas neuroticism is a robust predictor of affective and cognitive aggression (anger, hostility).

Mountain accidents have increased over the last decade all around the globe mostly due to a raise of mountain activity practitioners. Outcomes of accidents usually imply evacuation, traumatic injuries or even cardiovascular events. Sex, age, activity, altitude, experience, and equipment adequacy relate to accidents as direct causes or moderators of accident severity. This study focuses on the mountain accidents in Catalonia with descriptive and ordinal regression analysis aiming to characterize a victim vulnerability profile, which remains largely unexplored. The current sample includes 3257 mountain rescue operations from the Catalan Fire Department records between 2011 and 2021. Descriptive analysis showed that the most common profile was being hiker (63 %), climber (11.6 %), mountain biker (10.2 %), man (60.3 %), going in group (84.3 %), occurring in weekends (53.7 %), and suffering traumatic events (61.4 %) or needing technical support (20.4 %). Moreover, the main causes of fatality were falls and cardiovascular issues with the latter showing the higher fatality rate (55.5 %). Ordinal regression analysis explained a modest amount of variance (Nagelkerke R² = 0.12), suggesting that predictors of higher severity were Group, Altitude, Male, Gathering, Mountain Biking and other practices such as Hunting. Recommendation to rescue teams comprise standardizing and potentiate data collection, conducting awareness campaigns targeted mainly to hikers, mountain bikers and elderly men, and to reinforce awareness campaigns and rescue teams during weekends.

The Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET) is widely regarded as the primary instrument for measuring the Theory of Mind (ToM). However, its reliability, validity, and administration procedures, particularly across the lifespan and within adolescence, have been a subject of controversy. This study addresses these concerns using the Spanish version of the RMET with a Spanish sample of 162 late adolescents (93 women). The main findings indicate low reliability and questionable validity, casting doubt on the RMET’s suitability for assessing ToM during adolescence. The study discusses the administration of the instrument as a potential factor contributing to its psychometric deficiencies. Furthermore, it posits that the assumption of ToM as a singular, unitary construct may compromise the validity of the instrument.

The COVID-19 had an outstanding impact on well-being and mental health, which might have elicited geographical variations over time. This study examines the eventual impact of COVID-19 on self-reported mental distress in the mainland USA. There were two main aims. First, to evaluate the pre-pandemic (2019; $$n=412,597$$ ) and post-pandemic (2021; $$n=440,075$$ ) mental distress spatial distribution. Second, to contrast spatial data across three age groups, young (18–44 years), middle-aged (45–65 years), and old (older than 65 years). We considered a the Bayesian modified Besag–York–Molliè (BYM2) model, which is a Bayesian hierarchical model. Mental distress was the response variable function of age group, year and spatially structured and unstructured effects. The main findings indicate a positive spatial dependence between states of general mental distress before and after the COVID-19 and across age groups with substantial unstructured component. Moreover, younger individuals reported higher levels of mental distress and suffered the major worsening due to the pandemic. COVID-19 had a detrimental impact on mental health across the population, with consistent evidence of positive spatial dependence across states. Notably, young adults emerged as particularly vulnerable, exhibiting concerning levels of mental distress problems and being more sensitive to the effects of the pandemic. Henceforth, young adults might require specific tailored public health policies in eventual major pandemic events.