Police Psychology_W3.pptx

FPSY 3900 PSYCHOLOGY OF POLICING Burnout and the psychological impact of policing: Trends and coping strategies Dr. Ahmet Demirden AGENDA for TODAY Chapter 4: Burnout and the Psychological impact of policing: Trends and coping strategies Chapter 5 Trauma and critical incident exposure in law e...

FPSY 3900 PSYCHOLOGY OF POLICING Burnout and the psychological impact of policing: Trends and coping strategies Dr. Ahmet Demirden AGENDA for TODAY Chapter 4: Burnout and the Psychological impact of policing: Trends and coping strategies Chapter 5 Trauma and critical incident exposure in law enforcement INTRODUCTION  Police officers worldwide are at risk of high levels of stress • Exposure to traumatic events, • High workloads, • Organizational pressures. INTRODUCTION  High levels of stress without coping mechanisms lead to BURNOUT OR MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS (PTSD) INTRODUCTION  Increased absenteeism,  Health problems, more frequent complaints,  Heightened levels of aggression,  Increased use of alcohol or drugs,  More strained relations with family, friends, and citizens, INTRODUCTION  Elevated feelings of helplessness, heightened risk of depression, increased turnover,  More frequent suicidal thoughts, reduced life satisfaction, lower quality of work, and  Increases in officers’ aggressive attitudes and support for the use of force INTRODUCTION  Occupational and psychological stress will not affect every person working in a highly stressful role.  Recent research has investigated protective factors which mitigate against problems developing BURNOUT  Burnout has been described as psychological and emotional exhaustion, associated with feelings of hopelessness and difficulties in dealing with work or in doing your job effectively Burnout consists of three components:  Emotional exhaustion: the sense of being emotionally drained and exhausted, with little desire to go to work.  Depersonalization: the development of cynical attitudes, and a callous or impersonal manner of interacting with others; creating distance and becoming detached from others.  Reduced sense of professional accomplishment: feeling ineffective at work and unable to make a positive difference Compassion fatigue  The term compassion fatigue was initially described as a secondary traumatic stress reaction,  Whereby the defining characteristics include a reduction in the capacity or interest in bearing the suffering of others  Physical and emotional exhaustion &  REDUCED ABILITY TO FEEL EMPATHY PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAUMA  Any individual who is exposed to a highly stressful or traumatic event is at risk of developing symptoms of PTSD  FLASHBACKS,  HYPERVIGILANCE,  AVOIDANCE OF REMINDERS OF WHAT HAPPENED PORENTIAL RISK FACTORS       Occupational vs Organizational Stress Inherent dangers of police work, Stringent regulations, Staffing issues, Challenging shift patterns, Interpersonal challenges WORK HOME CONFLICT  Many police officers work antisocial hours  THUS, Higher risk of work-family conflict (WFC),  Family life can be a source of stress  BURNOUT prevalence higher when WFC reported. Personal characteristics  An attachment style.  Anxious-avoidant attachment style had higher levels of burnout  Outwardly denying one’s emotions (even if they are experienced internally), and  Not seeing other people as a source of comfort. An internal locus of control External locus of control  The degree to which individuals believe they can influence events affecting their lives.  Officers with an internal locus of control would be more likely  To blame internal factors when things went wrong at work, such as their skill in the role. The impact of emotions  Emotional exhaustion is one of the three burnout characteristics  Negative emotions affect the relationship between fatigue and emotional exhaustion  Low-arousal negative emotions are associated with daily hassles of the job Dissonance  This emotional dissonance refers to the discrepancy between felt emotions and the emotions that are displayed  Emotional dissonance depletes energy resources and can lead to cynical attitudes  DEEP ACTING: Doing something that did not fit with what one think and feel is right Moral injury  Emotional or psychological strain caused by perpetrating or witnessing acts which “transgress (one’s) deeply held moral beliefs and expectations” thinking if they  Feeling could have done something differently, experiencing guilt, self-blame, and shame.  Often studied in military veterans Police Culture  Beyond the individual-level factors which contribute to officers’ experience of burnout and stress,  Additional systemic issues that arise within the culture of police forces,  Police services are not a homogenous group  Not settings: conducive to openness about mental health Police Culture  The high levels of stigma associated with experiencing mental health difficulties is well documented,  Police work is characterized by a strong group identity  Worry about being viewed as weak or unable to cope by peers and senior staff  The male-dominated culture  The closed nature of the Police Organizational psychology perspectives  The job demand-resources model, The job demand-resources model  It is particularly useful in that it involves both individual level and organizational level variables  Helpful framework for approaching police well-being and burnout Interventions  The way we understand the issue of workplace well-being in general affects how we might go about trying to improve it  Affect the level on which we can approach • police compassion fatigue, • stress, and • burnout Different Levels of Interventions  Prevent harm by working at a primary level of intervention to try to make the job less stressful or the stress better managed,  Promote the positive by working at a secondary level of intervention, usually with individuals, to try to improve resilience and ways of coping,  Manage illness by working at a tertiary level, providing access to treatment for secondary trauma, stress, and burnout. Prevent harm  Can minimize job stress by • Job or work environment redesign, or • Work to better assess the risks involved and • Seek to mitigate them before harm is caused.  Stressors include • The intense and sometimes dangerous nature of the work, and • Aspects of culture and organizational climate Promote the positive  Secondary interventions tend to ignore more organizational factors • The 8-week mindfulness programs, • Training in self-management of work-life balance • Imaginal exposure to critical incidents to promote use of helpful coping strategies Manage Illness  Interventions for officers at the point where significant distress has occurred and help is required need to be timely and confidential  There is evidence that police officers are less likely to seek psychological or psychiatric help  There is some evidence of the efficacy of police cultures which have mandatory support for officers Process & Effect  Evaluating the effectiveness of an intervention is important, but so too is understanding the mechanisms by which an intervention is effective.  Process evaluation research (mechanisms of change), combined with evaluation of effectiveness  Can strengthen the validity of change findings Final Remarks  The stressful nature of police work means that officers are at risk of developing psychological difficulties relating to • Chronic stress, • Burnout, and • Compassion fatigue  Research has investigated a multitude of risk factors for developing such difficulties, • Occupational and • Organizational stressors Final Remarks  Most of the research points to organizational stressors as being most problematic as risk factors for burnout  How police officers process the emotional, cognitive, and moral challenges relating to their role which appears to be crucial and worthy of further investigation. Chapter 5 Trauma and critical incident exposure in law enforcement The nature of police traumatization  Police officers as a group are exposed to a wide range of potentially traumatic and critical incidents of a type, and in a degree, unique to this profession  Some shared by all first responders and some unique to the police Extent of Traumatization  Exposure to traumatic events in general is something that most people experience at least once in their lives  Most people this does not result in traumatic stress or other harmful and debilitating symptoms  The traumatized reaction is often conceptualized in the form of PTSD Extent of Traumatization  PTSD is a psychiatric disorder that may occur after experiencing life threatening or violent incidents  Symptoms of the disorder include • Avoidance behavior, • reexperiencing of traumatic events, • Negative changes in thoughts and mood, and • Hypervigilance Prevalence  About 7% of adults in the general population will develop PTSD during their life  Prevalence rates of PTSD among police officers vary widely  A Canadian study from 2008 found that 31.9% of the Canadian officers included in the study screened positive for PTSD PTSD trajectories in law enforcement  Most officers in their study experienced their first life threatening and critical event within 6 months of active duty • 88.1% of the officers did not exhibit substantial changes in PTSD • 10.7% of the officers exhibited initial high rates of PTSD which slowly decreased over time without full recovery. • The remaining 2% had a consistent increase PTSD symptoms with time Accumulation of trauma  Police officers experience repeated exposure to critical incidents at much higher rate than the general population,  They experience a range from 10 to more than 900 events that could be accounted as traumatic over a career Accumulation of trauma  Trauma accumulates.  That is every time a new critical incident is experienced, the degree of traumatization and PTSD symptomatology will also increase  Trauma among police officers does accumulate Police culture  The police culture is often characterized by an enormous sense of solidarity and loyalty  This loyalty can have both positive and negative effects on police traumatization.  The great sense of loyalty contributes to a feeling of “us versus them” Alternative conceptions of trauma  Police and Public Safety complex trauma is a complex concept that adapts the diagnosis of complex PTSD to the unique characteristics of the police culture within an ecological and ethological perspective Six Symptom Clusters 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Affect regulation, Amnesia and dissociation, Somatization, Self-esteem issues, Relational problems, and Loss of meaning. Risk and Protective Factors  Though all police officers are exposed to the general job conditions NOT all go on to develop the mental and physical health problems related to severe traumatization  What makes the difference between those officers who come out unharmed and those who do not?  While some risk factors can facilitate the symptom, other protective factors prevent such reactions Risk and Protective Factors  GENDER • Among the general population, PTSD prevalence rates for women have been reported as two to three times higher than for men • NOT replicated in the police population  SOCIAL SUPPORT • Social support is one of the most important protective factors against PTSD Risk and Protective Factors  FAMILY PSYCHIATRIC HISTORY • Mixed findings  PERITRAUMATIC REACTIONS • Feelings of high emotional distress, emotional exhaustion, as well as bodily distress experienced during a critical incident • Most predictive risk factor incident  JOB TYPE • Front line vs specialized squads Risk and Protective Factors  COPING STRATEGIES • Active vs passive coping  ORGANIZATIONAL FACTORS • • • • • Poor equipment, high workload, unsuitable partners, poor supervision, unclear roles, job insecurity, insufficient pay, and shift work have been reported to be risk factors. Prevention and treatment  Psychological debriefing.  The most common model is  The Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD)  The CISD should be considered as part of the more comprehensive, multicomponent Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) program Prevention and treatment  CISD is a group intervention technique, • officers involved in a critical incident, • Peer support personnel, are brought together and engage in a psychological debriefing • Led by a team of mental health professionals from crisis response teams Prevention and treatment  The debriefing is meant to be carried out as soon as possible after a critical incident.  Structured in seven phases, and  Designed to gradually probe increasingly sensitive and emotional topics concerning the incident.  Findings are mixed. Plan for Next week Chapter 6 From ideation to realization: Exploring the problem of police officer suicide