Peace Officer PTSD and Compound Trauma: Operational Risks and Stigma Management

Abstract

Peace officers, frequently and recurrently exposed to trauma on the job and often working long shifts and overtime, increasingly suffer from PTSD and compound trauma that predispose those officers to develop depression, anxiety, compassion fatigue, and suicidality, and lead those officers to shoot sooner and less accurately, to over-perceive threats, under-perceive options, and thereby pose unnecessarily enhanced risks to themselves and the public. That confluence is exacerbated by toxic masculinity and organizational stigma endemic in much of law enforcement that can prevent afflicted officers from seeking the psychological intervention and operational accommodations they desperately need. This chapter sketches the current situation among American law enforcement officers and the state-of-the-art stigma-reduction, stress-reduction, and psychological interventions that are beginning to ease the adverse impacts of PTSD and compound trauma on officers and members of the public with whom they interact.