Published works

With a coastline stretching for nearly 36,000 kms, including over 11,500 beaches, Australia is home to some of the world's most beautiful beaches— and thus over 100 million beach visitations annually (Surf Life Saving Australia Ltd, 2021). With 85% of Australia’s population living within one hour’s drive of the coastline, the safety of Australians and tourists visiting our beaches is paramount. In Victoria, this vital service is contributed to by 38,800 volunteer life saving members, dedicated to providing a range of services including beach patrol, aquatic rescues, providing first aid and emergency care and educating the public on surf and water safety, volunteering over 160,000 patrol hours in 2020/2021 (Life Saving Victoria, 2021). Life saving volunteers can also be exposed, often repeatedly, to potentially traumatising events, including attending to drownings, performing resuscitations and taking part in search and rescue operations, and additionally contending with other life-threatening factors in and on the ocean, including medical emergencies, marine creature bites, stings  and attacks, accidents and self-harm related incidents (Surf Life Saving Australia Ltd, 2021). Life saving volunteers are not immune to impacts from these experiences. This is particularly notable given the young age of many life saving volunteers involved in these active patrols, and their potential to experience adverse mental health impacts. Indeed, a 2020 study of 181 volunteer and paid lifesavers in New Zealand found that participants aged 17 to 26 years old experienced significantly higher posttraumatic stress symptoms compared with older participants, with 7.2% of younger participants scoring above the suggested cut-off for probable post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) compared with only 1.8% of older participants (Rooke & de Terte, 2020). Protecting and supporting the mental health of young volunteers is vital to the sustainability of the life saving volunteer service.

Despite the acknowledged exposure to potentially traumatising events, there has been limited information available to date on the mental health of life saving volunteers in Australia. In 2021, a team of researchers highlighted that despite national studies investigating mental health in emergency responders (e.g., ‘Answering the Call’; Beyond Blue, 2018), no research had been conducted that provided information on mental health in life saving volunteers, and they emphasised the “urgent need” for the development of projects focussed on this group of volunteers vital to the ongoing safety of the Australian community (Fien et al., 2021).

The current research project responds to this call, and to a request from Life Saving Victoria for research focussed on young life saving volunteer mental health. It is an extension to a previously completed project that examined the mental health of young adult fire and emergency service volunteers (fire and rescue, ambulance, marine rescue, coast guard, state emergency services and parks and wildlife) in the aftermath of the 2019/2020 bushfires (Taylor et al., 2021). This part of the project specifically focussed on life saving volunteer activities and mental health, including in response to the 2019/2020 bushfires, due to the acknowledgement that life saving services were impacted by and involved with response to this large scale disaster event (Life Saving Victoria 2020). The current pilot project additionally enabled connections and processes for pathways for research on mental health in young adult life saving volunteers to be established.