Probable post-traumatic stress disorder and harmful alcohol use among male members of the British Police Forces and the British Armed Forces: a comparative study

Abstract

Background : British Armed Forces’ and Police Forces’ personnel are trained to operate in potentially traumatic conditions. Consequently, they may experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is often comorbid with harmful alcohol use. Objective : We aimed to assess the proportions, and associations, of probable PTSD and harmful alcohol use among a covariate-balanced sample of male military personnel and police employees. Methods : Proportions of probable PTSD, harmful alcohol use, and daily binge drinking, were explored using data from the police Airwave Health Monitoring Study (2007–2015) ( N = 23,826) and the military Health and Wellbeing Cohort Study (phase 2: 2007–2009, phase 3: 2014–2016) ( N = 7,399). Entropy balancing weights were applied to the larger police sample to make them comparable to the military sample on a range of pre-specified variables (i.e. year of data collection, age and education attainment). Multinomial and logistic regression analyses determined sample differences in outcome variables, and associated factors (stratified by sample). Results : Proportions of probable PTSD were similar in military personnel and police employees (3.67% vs 3.95%), although the large sample size made these borderline significant (Adjusted Odds Ratio (AOR): 0.84; 95% Confidence Intervals (CI): 0.72 to 0.99). Clear differences were found in harmful alcohol use among military personnel, compared to police employees (9.59% vs 2.87%; AOR: 2.79; 95% CI: 2.42 to 3.21). Current smoking, which was more prevalent in military personnel, was associated with harmful drinking and binge drinking in both samples but was associated with PTSD in military personnel only. Conclusions : It is generally assumed that both groups have high rates of PTSD from traumatic exposures, however, low proportions of PTSD were observed in both samples, possibly reflecting protective effects of unit cohesion or resilience. The higher level of harmful drinking in military personnel may relate to more prominent drinking cultures or unique operational experiences.

A comparison of probable post-traumatic stress disorder and alcohol consumption among active female members of the UK Police Service and UK Armed Forces

“…The comparable levels of probable PTSD in female military personnel and police employees are harmonious with the findings from our analysis of male military personnel and police employees (approximately 4% for men and women in both occupational groups) [13]. This is consistent with previous evidence, whereby female gender is a risk factor for PTSD in general population samples, but studies of police and military samples often show no difference between genders [34].…”

“…As with the analysis of males, the present study also identified higher rates of harmful drinking, and comorbidity, in female military personnel, compared to female police employees [13]. The levels of harmful drinking observed in male and female police employees (approximately 3% for both) are similar to general population estimates (4% of men and 3% of women, using the same criteria) [12], but are higher in both military men (10%) and women (5%), in line with an existing direct comparison [10].…”

Bibliometric analysis of post-traumatic stress disorder in forensic medicine: Research trends, hot spots, and prospects

“…The most published author, S. Lee, is an expert in this field and has conducted in-depth research on PTSD from the aspects of research participants ( McLaughlin et al, 2017 ; Scott et al, 2018 ), risk factors ( Kessler et al, 2014 ; Bromet et al, 2017 ), pathogenesis ( Kim et al, 2020 ), diagnosis and treatment ( Baek et al, 2019 ), and epidemiology ( McGrath et al, 2017 ). Research on PTSD by N. Greenberg, N. Fear, and S. Wessely from King’s College London focuses on the mental health of people in environments of war, disaster, and high stress, as well as on diagnosis and treatment ( Fear et al, 2010 ; Greenberg et al, 2015 ; Brooks et al, 2020 ; Irizar et al, 2021 ). Among the highly cited authors, an article by R.C.…”

Beneficios de la intervención ante el Trastorno de Estrés Postraumático en soldados. Una revisión sistemática

“…En particular, el deterioro cognitivo se ha asociado con una reducción del funcionamiento psicosocial (Jaeger et al, 2006) y la capacidad de realizar actividades instrumentales de la vida diaria (Drew et al, 2019). Además, podría conllevar a una ingesta diaria de alcohol (Irizar et al, 2021), asociado al consumo de tabaco (Bohórquez-Borda et al, 2022), lo que incrementa la ansiedad de la persona (Soriano-Sánchez y Jiménez-Vázquez, 2022a). Finalmente, a día de hoy se ha expuesto los beneficios que poseen los programas de intervención como, por ejemplo, en mindfulness para mejorar la salud psicológica de los trabajadores, tanto de modo presencial como online (Pérez-Fuentes et al, 2020), así como mediante intervenciones realizadas con el uso de App para reducir el TEPT (Lasee et al, 2020) o, incluso, la utilización de nuevas propuestas, como podría ser la realidad virtual (Jones et al, 2022).…”