For some people, a gradual
accumulation of stressful life events can take them closer to their
panic threshold. If you are interested in a seeing a list of typical
life events, with an estimate of their typical stress value, click
The main signs and symptoms of
- Respiratory changes: Changes
in the breathing rate and pattern. In a panic attack, shortness
of breath is common and the diver may feel that they cannot get
enough air into their lungs.
- Cardiovascular changes: Changes
can include tachycardia (rapid heart rate) and arrhythmias (irregular
heart beat). The diver may experience heart 'palpitations', a feeling
of heaviness or chest pain.
- Gastrointestinal changes:
The GI system may become more active, with symptoms ranging from
'butterflies in the stomach' to nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea.
- Genitourinary changes: Changes
in the GU system include increased urination or the sensation of
needing to urinate and tingling sensations.
- Musculoskeletal changes: Muscular
tension, headache and tremor are common symptoms.
- Vocalisation changes: Tremor
in the voice, a high-pitched voice or 'frozen' vocalisations are
the main signs here.
Panic can lead to death in several
ways. If the diver is breathing rapidly and shallowly, insufficient
oxygen reaches the lungs, causing hypoxia and the build up of excess
CO2. The diver thus tries to breathe even faster and may expel the
regulator because they feel it is preventing them from getting enough
air. Some divers in this situation bolt for the surface and expose
themselves to the risks of decompression sickness. Hypoxia can also
lead to loss of consciousness. The increase in heart rate and sympathetic
nervous system activity can cause a heart attack in someone with a
Panic also prevents the diver
from thinking in a cool, rational way. If the situation calls for
rational thought, if the diver is tangled in a line or has an equipment
malfunction for example, panic can prevent the kind of reasoning that
is needed to solve the problem and will often make it worse.
Divers can prevent panic in a
number of ways:
- Improving physical fitness.
Divers who are fit have more resources that they can use to combat
cold, fatigue etc.
- Improving knowledge of
diving. Knowing the real risks of diving prevents unrealistic
fears from taking over. For example, many novice or trainee divers
ask me if we are likely to encounter sharks on a dive and how dangerous
they are. It usually helps them to know that the chances of being
bitten by a shark are less than the chances of being stung to death
by bees. If divers were worried by truly risky situations, they
would be far more likely to panic when they get behind the wheel
of a car. Driving a car is far more likely to lead to danger than
a shark encounter.
- Practising emergency responses.
One of the most useful things that divers can do to prevent panic
is to practice emergency response techniques, such as buddy breathing
ascents, until they become automatic. For one thing it saves valuable
time because in a real emergency you don't have to spend as much
time thinking of every step. For another thing, the confidence of
knowing you can handle emergencies makes panic a less likely response.
- Knowing your limits.
When you know what kind of dives you are trained and competent to
carry out, you are less likely to get into emergency situations.
- Improving psychological
fitness. Spigolon and Dell'oro (1985) have proposed that autogenic
training can be useful to divers. This involves learning techniques
that break the negative circle that goes from difficult situation
to anxiety to panic. A diver who, when confronted by difficulties,
can direct himself to "Relax - Breathe easily - Think"
will be in a better frame of mind to help himself and/or others.
A simple way of doing this is to include deliberate pauses at important
points in a dive. This will improve your diving and reduce stress.
At each major transition point - before donning gear or entering
the water; at the surface and before descending; when arriving at
the bottom and before ascending; at the safety stop; and finally
when arriving on the surface or before leaving the water:
- Check yourself, your gear, your buddy and the environment.
- Take time to allow your body and mind to adjust to where you are
and what you are doing.
- Compare instruments and communicate with your buddy as needed.
- Use appropriate equipment.
If you know that you will be diving under potentially difficult
conditions, it can be very reassuring to know that you have the
appropriate equipment. For example, if you will be drift diving
in choppy conditions so that the boat captain may find it difficult
to locate you after the dive, it can be reassuring to carry a signalling
device, such as a tall surface marker buoy, so that you are visible
even from a long way away.
In the mid 1970s, I read a journal
article about the difference between experienced and inexperienced
sky divers. Experienced sky divers were not only less anxious than
the inexperienced, they also felt the anxiety at a different time.
Experienced sky divers felt anxiety some hours before the jump and
were calm at the time of the jump, while inexperienced sky divers
felt maximum anxiety at the point of the jump itself. If I can track
down the reference I will put it here because I thought it was an
Supposing the worst happens and
you get involved in a dive incident where you, your dive buddy or
someone in your group had a dive emergency, you may have some reactions
you weren't expecting. Life threatening incidents can be upsetting,
overwhelming, even terrifying. Someone involved may experience Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Symptoms of PTSD may include:
Feeling tired, depressed, or drained of energy
Not enjoying things that used to be pleasurable
Feeling anxious, sometimes for no apparent reason, or feeling 'jumpy'
Experiencing intrusive thoughts of the dive incident
Having dreams or nightmares of the dive incident
Having more intense feelings than usual
Feeling alienated from people and having problems with relationships
If you think that someone you
know may be experiencing PTSD, there are things you can do to help
- Listen uncritically and sympathetically
- don't give advice or say things like, "You should have done
- Give them a hand with day
to day chores.
- Give them the opportunity
to talk if they want to - don't press them if they don't want to.
If the effects persist for more
than a week or two, suggest that they talk to a professional, such
as a counsellor.
The Exceptional Diver
Most of the findings above apply
to the 'average' diver. However, is there any way of training someone
to become an exceptional diver? Nevo and Breitstein (1999) report
one possible approach, based on the training of Soviet cosmonauts.
In addition to the complex routines that each cosmonaut had to memorise
perfectly, they were also trained in conditions designed to prepare
them psychologically for the stresses and possible emergencies of
space flight. For example, they carried out survival training in difficult
conditions to create feelings of autonomy and self-confidence; they
practised sky diving while doing more and more tasks during the jump,
to be able to divide attention and deal with problems simultaneously;
and they isolated crew members for a month in a closed room to become
accustomed to isolation.
This training was said to have
prepared them to deal with the mishaps that occurred during space
flights and to improvise solutions to the problems that arose.
Children and Diving
PADI has created diving programmes
that enable children as young as 8 years old to experience scuba diving.
With their usual thoroughness they have considered many aspects of
this before making programmes such as Bubblemaker available, including
looking into the developmental psychology of children and diving.
Below is a letter that I wrote in response to an article on the subject
that appeared in PADI's journal to its members. In case you do not
have access to the Undersea Journal, the original article consisted
mainly of an introduction to the developmental concepts of Jean Piaget,
an influential developmental psychologist who placed considerable
emphasis on a model of cognitive development involving progress through
Mr K. Shreeves
30151 Tomas Street
Rancho Santa Margarita
11th May 2001
Dear Mr Shreeves
Ref.: How Children Learn
I enjoyed reading your article
in the First Quarter issue of the Undersea Journal, on How Children
Learn. It is very encouraging for me as a diving instructor,
diving psychologist and lecturer in developmental psychology, to see
that PADI has taken the trouble to study the psychology of young people
and children in the development of their programmes.
I thought it worth adding to
what you wrote that, although Piaget is still respected by psychologists
and teachers alike and many teachers still describe what they do in
Piagetian terms, in practice very few actually use his concepts. In
practice, if you watch what teachers actually do, it is much more
in line with the increasingly popular work of Lev Vygotsky and his
sociocultural theory (see Vygotsky, 1978, for example). There is a
very good reason for that almost the only role for teachers
in Piagets model is in creating a suitable environment in which
children can learn for themselves. Vygotskys model is far better
suited both to the actual practice of teaching in schools and also
of imparting skills such as those needed for scuba diving to children.
There are also good reasons for
thinking that Piaget underestimated childrens abilities and
the ages at which they are able to do certain things, because the
tasks he used were not suited to the actual abilities of children.
So I believe that there are good reasons for not using Piagets
theories as the psychological basis for teaching children to dive,
but instead to use Vygotskys ideas.
Vygotsky, for example, used the
concept of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) to describe the
gap between what they are already able to do and what they cannot
accomplish without the help of a skilled adult. With the right kind
of guidance they can cross the ZPD gap and responsibility for learning
gradually shifts to the child. The temporary guidance that the skilled
adult gives is known as scaffolding, because the assistance is removed
when the child can do the task alone. It is like teaching a child
to float. First an adult provides support and gives guidance on breathing
and posture in the water etc. Then gradually the support is removed
until the child is floating by himself.
No single theory of childrens
development is universally accepted, but Vygotskys model seems
to have particular relevance to teaching diving skills to children,
where Piagets model is less so. However, one implication of
the model is that some detailed study is carried out to find out which
of the skills of diving fall within the ZPD for children at a particular
age and which skills are beyond the typical child of that age. If
it has not been done already, I would urge PADI to support such research
being carried out.
(Dr) Peter M. Forster
PADI # 605811
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher
psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
I hope you found this page interesting.
If you want to discuss any of it, please
get in touch. If you want to find out how to cope with diving
emergencies, read on - we are fortunate to enjoy a sport with one
of the lowest accident rates around, but the inherent risks of diving
mean dive accidents may be serious. And when things go wrong, they
can go wrong quickly. A quick, cool and effective response is often
the difference between a close call and serious injury or worse. How
prepared do you feel to handle a dive emergency? Go to: http://www.scubadiving.com/training/instruction/scuba911.shtml
to find out more about handling dive emergencies.
I wish you safe and sensational
Bachrach, A.J. and Egstrom, G.H.
(1987). Stress and performance in diving. San Pedro, CA: Best
Baddeley, A.D., Godden, D., Moray, N.P., Ross, H.E. and Synodinos,
N.E. (1978). Final report on training services agency contract
- Selection of diving trainees. Department of Psychology, Stirling
University and M.R.C. Applied Psychology Research Unit, Cambridge.
Edmonds, C., (1986). The abalone diver. Australia: National
Safety Council of Australia, Victoria.
Lesnik-Oberstein, M. and Cohen L. (1984). Cognitive style, sensation
seeking and assortative mating. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 46 (1), 112 - 117.
Nevo, B. and Breitstein, S. (1999). Psychological and Behavioral
Aspects of Diving. San Pedro, CA:Best Publishing Company.
Spigolon, L. and Dell'oro, A., (1985). Autogenic training in frogmen.
International Journal of Sport Psychology, 16 (4), 312 - 320.
Zuckerman, M. (1979). Sensation Seeking: Beyond the optimal level
of arousal. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
That's it for now - I will put
more interesting research here when I get the time. Here are links
back to our other diving pages:
© 2000 to 2001 Peter Michael
Copyright © Blue Oceans
& Peter Forster