Heart Rate Variability as a measure to identify autonomic dysfunction and mental health disorders in public safety personnel

Abstract

Unresolved trauma from critical incident exposures may lead to autonomic dysfunction and mental health disorders in public safety personnel (PSP). Heart rate variability (HRV) is a highly sensitive measure that can be used alongside psychological assessments to identify early warning signs of autonomic dysfunction that may be an early detector of worsened mental health. Objectives. The two primary objectives of this project were to: 1) critically appraise the literature involving HRV assessment in identifying mental health disorders in PSP based on its scientific rigor, and 2) develop a knowledge translation (KT) tool in the form of an infographic to guide HRV measurment and interpretation as a surrogate indice of autonomic function. Method. To address objective 1, methods developed by Arksey and O’Malley (2005) were adapted to conduct a scoping review on studies that used HRV to assess mental health and/or autonomic function in PSP. A quality appraisal (MacDermid et al., 2014) and a physiological HRV checklist (Catai et al., 2020) were combined into a hybrid critical appraisal tool to assess scientific merit of all studies. To address objective 2, high quality findings of the scoping review and the physiological HRV checklist (Catai et al., 2020) were used to develop an HRV measurement guideline infographic. [...]