Exposures to potentially traumatic events among public safety personnel in Canada.

Abstract

Canadian Public Safety Personnel (e.g., correctional workers, dispatchers, firefighters, paramedics, and police) are regularly exposed to potentially traumatic events, some of which are highlighted as critical incidents warranting additional resources. Unfortunately, available Canadian public safety personnel data measuring associations between potentially traumatic events and mental health remains sparse. The current research quantifies estimates for diverse event exposures within and between several categories of public safety personnel. Participants were 4,441 public safety personnel (31.7% women) in 1 of 6 categories (i.e., dispatchers, correctional workers, firefighters, municipal/provincial police, paramedics, and Royal Canadian Mounted Police). Participants reported exposures to diverse events including sudden violent (93.8%) or accidental deaths (93.7%), serious transportation accidents (93.2%), and physical assaults (90.6%), often 11+ times per event. There were significant relationships between potentially traumatic event exposures and all mental disorders. Sudden violent death and severe human suffering appeared particularly related to mental disorder symptoms, and therein potentially defensible as critical incidents. The current results offer initial evidence that (a) potentially traumatic event exposures are diverse and frequent among diverse Canadian public safety personnel; (b) many different types of exposure can be associated with mental disorders; (c) event exposures are associated with diverse mental disorders, including but not limited to posttraumatic stress disorder, and mental disorder screens would be substantially reduced in the absence of exposures; and (d) population attributable fractions indicated a substantial reduction in positive mental disorder screens (i.e., between 29.0 and 79.5%) if all traumatic event exposures were eliminated among Canadian public safety personnel.

Provincial Correctional Service Workers: The Prevalence of Mental Disorders

“…Positive screens for a mental disorder did not increase linearly as a function of age and years of service, contrasting results previous research [2]. The discrepant pattern may be due to occupational diversity among provincial correctional workers [30] or provincial correctional workers may reach a level of exposure that causes interacting risk and resiliency factors to differentiate people who stay in correctional work and people who leave. In any case, the discrepant pattern warrants additional research.…”

“…For example, persons working in wellness may be more regularly reminded about the importance of adaptative self-care and accessing mental health supports. All correctional workers are frequently exposed to PPTEs [30], but those working inside institutions (e.g., correctional officers, healthcare staff) may perceive themselves as having more accountability than those with less direct contact (e.g., administrators, record keepers, programming officers). Correctional workers with more direct contact may also perceive themselves as having less control, more uncertainty, and more unpredictability, which have been associated with increased mental health risks [31] and may be pronounced for the leadership members (e.g., wardens, superintendents, management) who are ultimately responsible.…”

Sleep Quality and Mental Disorder Symptoms among Canadian Public Safety Personnel

“…The high prevalence of sleep disturbances reported in the current sample were consistent with previous international research documenting sleep difficulties in firefighters, e.g., [22,31], paramedics, e.g., [26,32,64], and police, e.g., [10,29,31]. Canadian PSP sleep patterns may be impacted by long work hours, varying shift work, high stress, and exposure to potentially psychologically traumatic events [8,9], which may cumulatively increase the risk of mental disorder symptoms [31,65]. Insomnia has been strongly associated with various mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, and PTSD [23].…”

Systematic review of posttraumatic stress disorder in police officers following routine work‐related critical incident exposure

“…Similarly, Regehr et al 11 have reported in systematic review that the prevalence of PTSD in disaster‐exposed police is lower compared to both disaster‐exposed civilians as well as other first responder groups, with estimates of PTSD prevalence ranging from 0.4% to 12.9% across 17 studies. However, these disaster‐focused studies examine the mental health sequelae of specific large‐scale events, and do not explore the potential occupational and mental health burden of routine policework, which is itself associated with high rates of CI exposure 7 . In addition, the heterogeneity of this literature renders it difficult to assess the prevalence of PTSD in police relative to the general population outside the context of disaster work.…”