Helping Police Officers to Cope with Stress: A Cognitive—Behavioral Approach

Building Resilience: The Conceptual Basis and Research Evidence for Resilience Training Programs

“…Each intervention taught these skills slightly differently and spent a different amount of time on teaching and practicing these skills. Some interventions—specifically stress inoculation interventions—focused on practicing these skills in the presence of images of stressful/traumatic situations that the participants might have to face in real life (Andersen et al., 2015; Arnetz, Nevedal, Lumley, Backman, & Lublin, 2008; Sarason, Johnson, Berberich, & Siegal, 1979). For example, Adler, Williams, McGurk, Moss, and Bliese (2015) conducted resilience training using military participants with a combination of classroom-based psychoeducation focused on realistic expectations for military life and the emotions often faced during training, practical techniques for managing emotions using a cognitive–behavioral model and practice of those techniques along with anxiety reduction techniques.…”

Traumatic stress at work: A public health model

“…These techniques have been widely used to prepare people in stressful jobs to cope better with aspects of their work. Several studies with police officers (Novaco, 1977;Sarason et al, 1979) have demonstrated the usefulness of this approach in preparatory training for violent or otherwise difficult situations. Trainees were helped to monitor their reactions during role-plays of such anger-provoking or threatening situations and to identify and change inappropriate automatic thoughts.…”

Phased Training for High-Reliability Occupations

“…We address this issue as two related questions: (a) whether exposure to a live-fire scenario reduces the experience of anxiety and associated cognitive difficulties on subsequent exposures to the same scenario and (b) whether this effect generalizes to a new scenario. Previous research has shown that such training reduces self-reported stress in some domains (Baumann et al, 2001; Johnston & Cannon-Bowers, 1996; Saunders et al, 1996; Sarason et al, 1979). Therefore, we predict that such training will decrease anxiety and associated cognitive difficulties in firefighters on subsequent exposures to the same scenario.…”

“…Research has shown that such training reduces stress in a number of domains (Johnston & Cannon-Bowers, 1996; Saunders et al, 1996), including some high-reliability occupations (e.g., Baumann et al, 2001; Sarason, Johnson, Berberich, & Siegel, 1979). Some research also suggests that the highly engaging nature of stressful simulations may be particularly useful for domains in which on-the-job consequences of mistakes are severe (Burke et al, 2011).…”