Stéphane Guay

Stéphane Guay
Université de Montréal | UdeM · School of criminology and Department of psychiatry and addictology

Doctor of Philosophy, PhD

About

238
Publications
98,224
Reads
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4,415
Citations
Introduction
In 2006, I founded the Trauma Studies Centre, which is part of the Montreal Mental Health University Institute (Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal). Since then, my team and I have been conducting studies on post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health issues among victims of violent criminal acts, military veterans, and workers in high-risk sectors. All our current studies utilize a longitudinal design and one of them is a RCT.
Additional affiliations
January 2006 - June 2030
Université de Montréal
Position
  • Professor (Full)
May 2015 - July 2023
Centre de recherche de l'Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal
Position
  • Managing Director
January 2006 - present
Trauma Studies Center
Position
  • Managing Director
Education
September 1994 - February 2001
Université Laval
Field of study
  • Psychology

Publications

Publications (238)
Article
Objectifs En 2008, le plan stratégique du National Institute of Mental Health , a donné naissance au projet Research Domain Criteria (RDoC), un cadre de travail visant à établir des domaines fonctionnels majeurs de la psyché humaine allant du normal au pathologique afin, notamment, de développer une nouvelle méthode de classification des troubles d...
Preprint
Full-text available
Background Common mental disorders (CMDs) are highly prevalent in workplace settings, and have become a significant public health challenge. This study aims to assess the effectiveness of PRATICAdr, a web application facilitated by a Return-to-Work Coordinator (RTW-C), with a focus on reducing sick leave duration and preventing relapse in individua...
Article
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Introduction Firefighters face elevated risks of common mental health issues, with distress rates estimated at around 30%, surpassing those of many other occupational groups. While exposure to potentially traumatic events (PTEs) is a well-recognized risk factor, existing research acknowledges the need for a broader perspective encompassing multidim...
Article
The Signature Biobank is a longitudinal repository of biospecimen, psychological, sociodemographic, and diagnostic data that was created in 2012. The Signature Consortium represents a group of approximately one hundred Quebec-based transdisciplinary clinicians and research scientists with various expertise in the field of psychiatry. The objective...
Article
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The purpose of this study was to train and test preliminary models using two machine learning algorithms to identify healthcare workers at risk of developing anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. The study included data from a prospective cohort study of 816 healthcare workers collected using a mobile application during the first...
Article
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Introduction Previous research has demonstrated the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic emergency on the wellbeing of healthcare workers. However, few research contributions reported a longitudinal evaluation of psychological distress and examined determinants of its duration and course over time. The present study aims to explore the impact o...
Article
Background Child protection workers (CPWs) are regularly exposed to potentially traumatic events (PTEs), especially, aggressive behaviors from the service users. Objectives This study aimed to evaluate the effects of a peer support program on the mental health and work functioning of CPWs exposed to a PTE, while considering the moderating effect o...
Article
Introduction: Both exposure to a natural disaster and psychological symptoms may lead to decreases in social support. Few studies have examined ways to improve social support among victims of natural disasters. Aims: The objective of the study was to assess emotional and tangible support following a 12-session Internet-based cognitive behavioral...
Article
Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic had an impact on the psychological health of healthcare workers (HCWs). Cross-sectional studies report suicidal ideation in this population during this period, but no longitudinal study has examined the evolution of these ideas over time. Objectives: To assess the evolution of suicidal ideation of HCWs during the...
Article
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Background Long-term psychological impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on healthcare workers remain unknown. We aimed to determine the one-year progression of burnout and mental health since pandemic onset, and verify if protective factors against psychological distress at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic (Cyr et al. in Front Psychiatry; 2021) r...
Article
This study aimed at evaluating the efficacy of an online CBT intervention with limited therapist contact targeting a range of post-traumatic symptoms among evacuees from the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfires. One hundred and thirty-six residents of Fort McMurray who reported either moderate PTSD symptoms (PCL-5 ≥ 23) or mild PTSD symptoms (PCL-5 ≥ 10) w...
Article
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Background: Natural disasters happen in an increased frequency, and telemental health interventions could offer easily accessible help to reduce mental health symptoms experienced by survivors. However, there are very few programs offered to natural disaster survivors, and no research exists on therapists' experiences with providing blended interv...
Article
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Background: Health care workers (HCW) exposed to COVID-19 risk experiencing psychological distress. Little is known regarding longitudinal perspectives and evolutions of psychological distress within this population. The objective of this study is to extend the results of our previous study to the pandemic's second wave. Method: This prospective...
Article
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Background: Exposure to potentially traumatic events (PTEs) at work can have a negative impact on the psychological health and work life of child protection workers (CPWs). The most common form of work-related PTE experienced by CPWs consists of aggressive behaviours from the youths or their parents. Objective: This study aims to identify modifi...
Article
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Sexual minority women (SMW) are at high risk of experiencing stigma, mental health problems, and being victims of intimate partner violence (IPV). This vulnerability can be explained by the sexual and gender minority stress model, stating that sexual and gender minority people suffer from specific stress factors added to general stressors, leading...
Article
Full-text available
Sexual minority women (SMW) are at high risk of experiencing stigma, mental health problems, and being victims of intimate partner violence (IPV). This vulnerability can be explained by the sexual and gender minority stress model, stating that sexual and gender minority people suffer from specific stress factors added to general stressors, leading...
Article
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Background The COVID-19 pandemic has put chronic pressure on worldwide healthcare systems. While the literature regarding the prevalence of psychological distress and associated risk factors among healthcare workers facing COVID-19 has exploded, biological variables have been mostly overlooked. Methods 467 healthcare workers from Quebec, Canada, a...
Article
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This study examines the influence of gender on mental health services utilization and on perceived barriers to treatment one year after the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfires. Data was collected through a phone survey from May to July 2017 (N = 1510). Participants were English-speaking evacuees aged 18 and older. Mental health services utilization and ba...
Article
Contexte La fréquence de diagnostic probable de trouble de santé mentale est beaucoup plus haute chez le personnel de la sécurité publique (PSP) que dans la population générale, ce qui s’explique entre autres par l’exercice des fonctions opérationnelles. Les blessures de stress opérationnelles (BSO) les plus fréquentes chez les PSP au Canada sont l...
Preprint
BACKGROUND Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been known for almost forty years to generate fear and anxiety. Children may become restless during scanning, which results in movement artifacts requiring the MRI to be repeated and reschedule with sedation. Very few studies seemed to have looked at the effect of virtual reality (VR) on anxiety in ch...
Article
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Background: It is known that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) procedures generate fear and anxiety. Children may become restless during scanning, which results in movement artifacts requiring the MRI procedure to be repeated with sedation. Few studies seem to have looked at the effect of immersive virtual reality (IVR) on anxiety in children sched...
Article
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Objective: This study examined how best to identify modifiable protective and risk factors for burnout in healthcare workers in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Individual, occupational, organizational and social factors were investigated. The study also assessed the impact of these factors on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, and d...
Article
Objectives Health-care workers (HCW) exposed to COVID-19 are at risk of experiencing psychological distress. Although several cross-sectional studies have been carried out, a longitudinal perspective is needed to better understand the evolution of psychological distress indicators within this population. The objectives of this study were to assess...
Article
Purpose To disentangle the key steps of the return to work (RTW) process and offer clearer recovery-focused and sustainable RTW for people on sick leave due to common mental disorders (CMDs). Methods This participatory research involves two large Canadian organizations. In each organization, we established an advisory committee composed of RTW sta...
Article
Because of the nature of their mandate, child protection workers (CPWs) are at risk of experiencing physical and psychological forms of aggression at the hands of service users. For this reason, it is important that CPWs receive the support they need to ensure their resilience. This study sought to analyze how CPWs seek, receive, and perceive the s...
Article
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Background: The 2016 wildfires in Fort McMurray (Alberta, Canada) led to a massive displacement of 88,000 people and destroyed 2,400 homes. Although no direct human fatality resulted, many individuals feared for their lives or those of their loved ones. Objectives: (1) To estimate the prevalence of post-traumatic stress, major depressive, insomnia,...
Article
Working in a stressful environment, child protection workers (CPWs) are often victims of psychological and physical acts of aggression perpetrated by their clients. This can be emotionally distressing for CPWs. Previous authors have suggested that this distress could place CPWs at greater risk for subsequent victimisation if they become emotionally...
Article
Introduction Les troubles mentaux courants (TMC) représentent de 30 % à 50 % des absences maladies toutes confondues. Le succès du retour au travail (RAT) n’est pas dû au seul fait de l’individu, mais plutôt au résultat de l’interaction entre les acteurs impliqués dans le processus. De nombreuses applications en santé mentale ont été développées po...
Article
Context The frequency of probable mental health diagnoses is much higher among public safety personnel (PSP) than in the general population, which can be explained in part by their operational duties. The most common operational stress injuries (OSI) among PSP in Canada are depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and generalized anxiety disorder...
Article
Introduction Common mental disorders (CMDs) account for 30% to 50% of all illness absences. The success of RTW is not only due to the individual but rather to the result of the interaction between the stakeholders involved in the RTW process. Numerous mental health applications have been developed to improve patient management and optimize communic...
Article
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Objective: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been shown to significantly impair quality of life (QOL), although no meta-analysis has evaluated the effect of psychotherapies for PTSD on QOL in the civilian population. The current meta-analysis aimed to assess these effects in the adult civilian population. Method: An exhaustive search of 13...
Article
Aim The COVID‐19 pandemic has introduced many mental health professionals to therapy via videoconferencing. Mostly individual teletherapy has been offered and studied, although group therapy is often offered in clinics. In fact, little is known regarding group therapy's acceptability, feasibility, and potential impact when offered via videoconferen...
Article
Victims of violent crime (VVC) are at risk of developing acute stress disorder (ASD) and subsequent posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In addition, VVC are more likely to have low social support due to stigmatization and victim‐blaming, and PTSD is frequently associated with depression, anxiety, and impaired quality of life (QoL). The present st...
Article
Recent evidence suggests that patients with psychotic disorders have metabolic disturbances (e.g., insulin resistance, dyslipidemia) at the onset of the disease and before antipsychotic exposure. Such disturbances are strongly associated with adipose tissue dysregulation. Measuring adipokines, the molecular mediators of adipose function, could prov...
Article
Background: Workplace aggression constitutes a serious issue for healthcare workers and organizations. Aggression is tied to physical and mental health issues at an individual level, as well as to absenteeism, decreased productivity or quality of work, and high employee turnover rates at an organizational level. To counteract these negative impact...
Article
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The lack of knowledge regarding the roles and actions of return to work (RTW) stakeholders create confusion and uncertainty about how and when to RTW after experiencing a common mental disorder (CMD). Purpose The purpose of this scoping review is to disentangle the various stakeholders’ role and actions in the RTW process of workers on sick-leave d...
Article
The first purpose of this systematic review and metaanalysis was to describe rates of acute stress disorder following five different types of traumatic events. The second goal was to assess the methodological and trauma-related factors influencing these rates. Between May 2017 and October 2019, studies were identified by searching through the Psych...
Article
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La violence en milieu de travail est un facteur de risque connu pour la chute de la santé mentale et les intentions de quitter leur emploi. Pourtant, à ce jour, les chercheurs ne savent toujours pas comment les travailleurs victimes s’en sortent avec le temps ou comment les organisations peuvent les aider à se rétablir. Cette étude visait à documen...
Article
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Objectifs. 1) Délimiter les stratégies d'intervention de la TCC les plus efficaces pour traiter le TSPT, et ce, à l'aide de trois mesures d'impacts, soit; la sévérité des symptômes, la qualité de vie et le fonctionnement au quotidien. 2) Observer les patrons de changements thérapeutiques spécifiques sur chaque mesure d'impact. Méthode. L'échantillo...
Preprint
UNSTRUCTURED Mental health apps have great potential to help people needing support to cope with distress or specific symptoms. There is in fact an exponential increase of mental health Apps available online, with less than 5% actually being studied. Nonetheless, there is a need to assess the quality of the evidence available and to summarize the r...
Article
Background Mental health apps have great potential to help people needing support to cope with distress or specific symptoms. In fact, there is an exponential increase in the number of mental health apps available on the internet, with less than 5% being actually studied. Objective This study aimed to assess the quality of the available evidence r...
Article
In recent years, many authors have written on the importance of analyzing social support when it comes to understanding PTSD patients. However, the effects of important aspects of the social support construct itself, such as the source of support and its underlying psychosocial processes, remain relatively unexamined. Using a qualitative design, th...
Article
Introduction Studies have shown that, following psychotherapy for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), symptoms and quality of life (QoL) may improve in many patients, but not always to the same extent. Dysfunctional core beliefs, such as personality beliefs (PB), are associated to psychopathology, including PTSD, and could be associated with the...
Article
Full-text available
Objective: With the general aim of better understanding their temporal relationships, trauma-related symptoms and quality of life were investigated among victims of a violent act at work. Method: We used path analysis modeling to test the relationship between symptoms and quality of life as interrelated rather than merely sequential in a cohort...
Article
Criminal acts are the most common traumatic events to which the general population is exposed. Developing clinical guidelines for preventing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among victims of violent crime would help to reduce the mental health costs related to these events. The goal of the current article was to systematically review published...
Article
Background: Although depression has been extensively studied in relations to Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) and Childhood Maltreatment (CM), we still know little about its relationship with other types of violent crimes (e.g., physical assault, mugging) or how symptoms evolve over time. Methods: Using a clinical sample of 132 crime victims, thi...
Book
Au Canada, la majorité (76 %) de la population vivra un événement traumatique au cours de sa vie. Même si la plupart des personnes arrivent à s’adapter à un tel événement, près de 10 % développeront un trouble de stress post-traumatique (TSPT). Ce nombre peut tripler, voire quadrupler dans les populations plus à risque, comme les militaires, les vi...
Article
Although a majority of people will be exposed to a traumatic event over the course of their lifespan, only a minority will develop post-traumatic stress disorder. Better understanding the factors contributing to the development of this psychopathology is of high importance and could significantly reduce the societal and human costs associated with...
Article
Full-text available
A railway accident which occurred in Lac-Megantic in Quebec, Canada, caused disruption for an entire community. This study examines the psychosocial difficulties in a group of exposed adolescents aged between 11 to 17, nine months after the tragedy. The analyses were conducted on a sample of 515 adolescents, attending high school, and living near t...
Article
Full-text available
Objectif. L’objectif de cette étude qualitative est de décrire la motivation au travail des intervenants en protection de la jeunesse (PJ) en explorant leurs motifs initiaux de carrière (pourquoi avoir choisi de travailler en PJ) ainsi que leurs sources de motivation actuelles (les irritants et les avantages perçus dans leur environnement de travai...
Article
This study aimed to examine gender effects on the relations between abusive supervision and mental health issues, work-family conflicts, as well as the risk of alcohol use. A subset of the SALVEO data (N = 2,058) was used in this paper to conduct multilevel regression analysis, controlling for both work and non-work related determinants. Results sh...
Article
Introduction Although cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is effective in treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), some clients remain symptomatic after treatment. Some individuals with PTSD may present more severe dysfunctional cognitive schemas and use dysfunctional coping strategies. Objectives The review aims to answer the following ques...
Article
Full-text available
There is strong research evidence for the association of personality pathology and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as well as trauma-related negative cognitions (TRNC) and PTSD symptoms. However, the relationship between personality pathology and TRNC in the context of PTSD is mostly unknown. In the present study, we aimed to examine whether...
Article
Child protection workers (CPWs) are frequently exposed to client violence, both psychological and physical, in their line of work whether they operate in the community or in residential settings. Despite this known vulnerability, research on the subject has lagged. The current study sought to analyze CPWs' experiences with client violence, their in...
Article
Background: Victims of violent crime are at elevated risk of developing acute stress disorder (ASD) as well as subsequent post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), both of which are linked to severe psychological distress. The aim of this 12-month prospective study was to evaluate the efficacy of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) vs. cognitive-behav...
Article
The objective of this study was to assess whether the psychological distress of young men and women involved in intimate partner violence (IPV) is predicted by their reported role in the pattern of violence. Dyadic structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses were performed on a sample of 205 young couples, controlling for income, cohabitation, chil...
Article
The objective of this study was to assess whether the psychological distress of young men and women involved in intimate partner violence (IPV) is predicted by their reported role in the pattern of violence. Dyadic structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses were performed on a sample of 205 young couples, controlling for income, cohabitation, chil...
Article
Full-text available
Objective: People with mental illnesses face stigma that hinders their full integration into society. Work is a major determinant of social inclusion, however, people with mental disorders have fewer opportunities to work. Emerging evidence suggests that social enterprises help disadvantaged people with their work integration process. The purpose...
Article
Background: Serious violent acts (e.g. physical violence, robbery, sexual aggression and death threats) are among the most visible and notable examples of workplace violence. Although women are commonly found to be at higher risk for post-traumatic reactions following workplace violence, little is known as regards sex differences concerning the ty...
Article
Full-text available
Panic disorder with or without agoraphobia (PD/A) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) are characterized by major behavioral dysruptions that may affect patients’ social and marital functioning. The disorders’ impact on interpersonal relationships may also affect the quality of support patients receive from their social network. The main goal of...
Article
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The Omega Program for the Management of Aggressive Behaviors aims to reduce patients' dangerous behaviors, towards themselves or others, and to reduce the use of seclusion and restraint (S/R). A previous study in a Mental Health Institute (Montreal, Canada) showed that implementing this program allowed employees of the intensive care and emergency...
Article
Traumatic events at work can have debilitating effects on employees. This pilot study aims to describe the trauma exposure, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) severity, functioning level, and general and work-related quality of life of employees who experienced a workplace trauma and consequently developed PTSD. Forty-four participants with curre...
Technical Report
Full-text available
Principaux enseignements du rapport: Les incidents de violence pour lesquels les 118 chauffeurs ont participé à l’étude sont des agressions verbales (50%) et des agressions physiques (45%). Les autres chauffeurs (5%) ont été victimes ou témoins d’un autre type d’incident. Plus de la moitié des participants (60%) ont probablement développé des sympt...
Article
This study examined the impact of workplace violence against 109 bus drivers over a 1-year span. Workplace violence is related to both psychological and work-related consequences. Our findings showed that bus drivers experienced a wide range of violence at work and the psychological consequences were devastating: Half of the participants met the di...
Article
Full-text available
Investigations into workplace aggression (WPA) remain largely occupation specific, with few studies using a comparative approach. The aim of the present study was to compare the health care, law enforcement, and public transportation sectors with regards to the prevalence of different types of WPA, the perceptions of workers toward WPA, and the psy...
Article
This prospective study evaluated the main and interactive effects of peritraumatic reactions with gender on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) onset, independently of known risk factors. Further, 111 adult victims of violent crime completed the Structured Clinical Interview, the Modified PTSD Symptom Scale, the Peritraumatic Dissociative Experien...
Article
BACKGROUND: Exposure to violence in the mental health sector both affects employees and has implications for the quality of care provided. OBJECTIVE: This phenomenological study aims to describe and understand the ways in which acts of aggression from a patient might affect workers in a psychiatric institute, their relationships with the patients...
Article
Full-text available
Introduction The use of peer support programmes to help workers experiencing potentially traumatic events (PTE) has increased in high-risk organisations in the last decades. However, the scientific evidence of its effectiveness is still very limited. This paper aims to describe the protocol of a prospective cohort study that assesses the efficacy o...
Article
Full-text available
Les jeunes à double statut ou sous double autorité ( crossover youth ) sont des adolescents ayant été victimes de maltraitance et qui sont aussi auteurs d’une infraction criminelle. Une étude a montré que ces jeunes reçoivent généralement des peines plus sévères que les contrevenants n’ayant jamais été en contact avec le système de protection de la...
Article
Background: Workplace violence is a serious concern for workers' mental health and well-being in high risk work sectors. Objective: This study examined victims' and witnesses' experiences after exposure to workplace violence, and the types of help they used to cope with the violent event. Methods: Workers (n = 211) from five different work sec...