Can police be trained in trauma processing to minimise PTSD symptoms? Feasibility and proof of concept with a newly recruited UK police population

Abstract

Neuropsychological trauma processing techniques based on hippocampal-dependent spatial and episodic memory were trialled with 71 newly recruited officers within one UK police force between March 2018 and February 2019. Results indicate that the skills are teachable within an operational training environment, have a positive impact on feelings of ease about difficult or traumatic work-related incidents, can improve recall of events and may mitigate against the impact of age and trauma exposure on memory. Participants report the techniques to be useable, sharable and operationally relevant to trauma management and personal resilience. Results will inform a larger randomised controlled trial.

The Role of Implicit Memory in the Development and Recovery from Trauma-Related Disorders

“…Maguire et al (2006) and Woollett and Maquire (2011) have documented increases in gray matter mid-posterior and posterior hippocampi volume in taxi drivers associated with increased spatial knowledge of the large complex city of London [179,180]. These findings, along with the benefits of increasing hippocampal-dependent spatial and episodic memory function in the prevention and recovery from PTSD, have led Miller et al (2019) to develop a trauma management and personal resilience training program for police officers that has demonstrated notable effectiveness [181]. The enhancement of hippocampal functioning in the prevention and recovery from PTSD is another area warranting further investigation.…”

The development of a UK police traumatic events checklist

“…A pilot study of coding police trauma data was undertaken to test these mechanisms, comprising: a. Manually coding 71 police traumas reported in data from the Randomised Controlled Trial of trauma processing techniques (Miller et al, 2019). b.…”

“…A pilot study of coding police trauma data was undertaken to test these mechanisms, comprising:Manually coding 71 police traumas reported in data from the Randomised Controlled Trial of trauma processing techniques (Miller et al, 2019). Generating a coding structure of event types and situational context from 1,000 free text responses to the question, ‘anything else [you] wish to tell us?’ (TJTL, 2018).…”

“…Manually coding 71 police traumas reported in data from the Randomised Controlled Trial of trauma processing techniques (Miller et al, 2019).…”

“…Manually coding police traumas. Researcher A undertook preliminary coding of police trauma exposures, taken from a dataset of 71 new police recruits who were part of a trauma processing skills Randomised Controlled Trial (Miller et al, 2019). Data had been collected remotely (online) on a monthly basis and at two training sessions (n ¼ 32, 28).…”