Routine occupational stress and psychological distress in police

Abstract

The relationship between routine work stress and psychological distress was investigated among 733 police officers in three US cities, during 1998-1999. The Work Environment Inventory (WEI) was developed to assess exposure to routine work stressors, while excluding duty-related traumatic stressors (critical incidents). The WEI and its general properties are presented. The relationship between routine work stress exposure and psychological distress is then explored. Exposure to routine work stressors predicted general psychological distress (r = 0.46), as well as post-traumatic stress symptoms following officers' most traumatic career incident (rs = 0.26 to 0.39). Multivariate analyses found that these effects were independent of, and larger than, the effects of cumulative critical incident exposure. (Time since the most traumatic event, social support, and social desirability effects were also controlled statistically.) Routine occupational stress exposure appears to be a significant risk factor for psychological distress among police officers, and a surprisingly strong predictor of post-traumatic stress symptoms.

Associations of Long-term Shift Work with Waking Salivary Cortisol Concentration and Patterns among Police Officers

“…In fact, long-term shift work, particularly evening or rotating shift work, has been linked to chronic stress with possible adverse consequences on the neuroendocrine-immune systems 12) . Policing by its nature is a stressful occupation where officers are exposed to a high level of traumatic and non-traumatic stressors 13) and shift work, a major stressor in police work as it is in many occupations, is an integral part of law enforcement. Consequently police officers are shown to have higher rates *To whom correspondence should be addressed.…”

Povezanost Okupacionog Stresa I Mentalnog Zdravlja U Populaciji Policajaca: Metaanaliza

“…Što se tiče okupacionog stresa kod policajaca, devet studija je koristilo postojeće validirane instrumente, osim u studiji 1 (Liberman et al, 2002), gde su autori konstruisali instrument za potrebe studije, koji je kasnije korišćen i u studiji 10 (Pole et al, 2006). Kada je u pitanju varijabla mentalno zdravlje, u svih deset studija su korišćeni validirani instrumenti.…”

“…stresorima. Ovakvo združeno dejstvo različitih okupacionih stresora povezano je sa PTSP-om (Liberman et al, 2002), sagorevanjem na poslu (Burke, 1993) i stopom samoubistava (Violanti, 1997). Collins i Gibbs (Collins & Gibbs, 2003) navode da postoje dokazi da se stepen indikatora psihopatoloških poremećaja kod policajaca povećava, uprkos pojačanoj pažnji koja je posvećena ovom pitanju od 1970-ih godina prošlog veka.…”

Law enforcement and cardiovascular risk: Findings of a cross-sectional study from Rural Karnataka

“…1,2 It has been reported by researchers that due to enormous stress, police officers suffer from different physiological disorders, such as gastrointestinal, insomnia, psychological disorders,family dysfunction 1,[3][4][5][6][7][8][9] and cardiovascular disorders 10,11 than the general population. The objective of the study was to estimate the burden of individual and aggregated CVD risk factors and predict the 10 year risk of fatal and non-fatal cardiovascular event in this population using Framingham risk score.…”