THE EFFECTS OF STRESS ON POLICE OFFICERS

 MY DEDICATION TO ALL LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS

LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS – MY HERO

I don’t believe in earthly idols, however I guess I am like all other Americans – I do believe in heroes. I treasure my friendship with the law enforcement officers I have had the opportunity to share what I’ve learned over the years is what I hope will keep them safe while they are protecting all of us. I will always look upon law enforcement officers as my friends. They are dedicated public servants who are sworn to maintain and protect public safety at any time and place – each and every one of them are the bravest and the best the entire world can offer. My heroes are all the law enforcement officers out there protecting all Americans.

 NOT A DEDICATION – ONLY  MY THOUGHTS?

 There has been a lot of research on the negative effects of stress on people in general. I am sure you know that police work is one of the top rated professions for job stress next to air traffic controllers and dentists. A good way to start this presentation, I think, is to give a good working definition of police stress I have seen the following definition around enough to realize that many who are reading this are already familiar with this excellent definition. What I like about the following definition is that it is not just scientific, but gives an idea of what stress is, relates very well to the police job, and can even give us an idea of what cops may need to do to help themselves with stress. Okay, here it is:

”That feeling and desire along with the ensuing bodily effects, experienced by a person who has a strong and true longing to choke the living shit out of someone who desperately deserves it, but you can't.”

MY OPINION-EACH OFFICER SHOULD DO A LITTLE CHOKING TO SOME OF THESE HARD ASS CRIMINALS.

Now, while this may sound funny there is a real element of truth to it. An element of truth that says an awful lot about police work. And that is the part of the definition "......BUT YOU CAN'T". Police work, by its very nature, calls for an incredible amount of restraint. Continual restraint. Draining restraint. It is stressful. The demands on police officers to show ever greater restraint have been increasing over the years, and not so coincidentally have the effects of stress on police work.

 CAN’T - there should not be such word in the officer vocabulary. I have watch thousand of arrest videos which each time the officer puts himself in harms way, just trying to do his job. Running through the jungle in the city, being shot at, driving at high speed chases and in the end being lied to. Criminals are the lowest of all human beings.  Once they are caught by the police they always cry like a baby. They always claiming their innocence of any crime.

What is the difference? YOU CAN'T CHOKE EM ANYMORE! Street justice is all but gone. I actually believe if officers had more authority on the street, there would a lot less criminals out there.  The statement, “innocent until proven guilty”, that is lot of crap. Criminal would not be criminals if they were the innocent people they make themselves out to be. YOU CAN'T CHOKE ANYONE WITH THEIR  HANDS TIED!  THAT STATEMENT WOULD NOT BE TRUE IF I WAS ONE OF THOSE OFFICERS OUT THERE! CHOKE WOULD BE AT THE TOP OF MY LIST OF THINGS TO DO EACH DAY.

 What does that mean, simple – “officers soon start to feel that they are choking themselves.” If we take a quick overview of police work and look at the biggest stressors are, we find:

• Killing someone in the line of duty.
• Having you partner killed in the line of duty.
• Lack of support by the department/bosses.
• Shift-work and disruption of family time/family rituals.
• The daily grind of dealing with the stupidity of the public, or the "asshole factor".

Interestingly, physical danger is ranked low on the list of stressors by police officers! One of the worst effects of stress on police officers is of course suicide. We are becoming all too familiar with police suicide especially with the attention the media has given. Twice as many police officers die by their own hand as do in the line of duty!

What is going on? Every study done points to the higher levels of stress police officers face, but what form does that stress take? With suicide there seem to be four factors:

1. Divorce.

 Alcohol - not alcoholism. That was one of the early theories. But in actuality it was the use of alcohol right before the act to "get up the nerve".

 Depression.

 A failure to get help. (Most officers who commit suicide have no history of having sought counseling).

All four factors are symptoms that can stem from an officer's stress levels. Police suicide is more directly related to relationship problems than to job stress!

Police officers going through a divorce are 5 times more likely to commit suicide than and officer in a stable marriage! Relationship problems, however, are highly related to job stress. The circle is complete!

If we consider that officers have an important relationship with their department, we can examine the effect of that relationship gone bad.

So we see that stress has a profound effect on police officers lives, especially their home lives. Studies have called police work a "high risk lifestyle". Not high risk in terms of the physical dangers of the job, but a high risk in terms of developing attitudinal problems, behavioral problems, and intimacy and relationship problems. So you learn something about the effects of police work. You learn if you ask the average cop "Hey, what's been the scariest experience during your police career?" They will answer "My first marriage!"

As a police officer progresses in his/her career is the eroding of the attitudes. As noted above, police work presents a high risk of developing attitudinal problems. As a police officer's career progresses, they become more cynical. No one questions this anymore.

So, what is the problem with becoming cynical? Life is like an airplane. An airplane has four forces working on it. Gravity pulls it down. But the wings can produce lift, which picks it up. The engines produce thrust. But the air around the plane produces drag or resistance. In order to fly a pilot will take the plane, point it into the greatest amount of resistance (into the wind), and add the maximum amount of thrust. Maximum thrust into maximum resistance produces lift. Once airborne your height or elevation is controlled by attitude. If you pull back on the stick the nose of the plane points up. You have a positive attitude and will climb. If you push the stick forward you have a negative attitude and will fall. Fall far enough and you will crash.

The problem with cynicism is that destroys all attitudes. All attitudes become negative and thus the cynic will eventually crash. Cops more than people in any other profession are in continual danger of becoming cynics. In continual danger of crashing!

It is, I think, an officer’s job and duty (especially to his family) not to crash. Too much is at stake. Staying psychologically fit means committing to take care of yourself. It takes work. The greater the stress, the greater the need to apply maximum thrust into this resistance! For the average officer possibly the hardest job of staying healthy is to admit that he/she has a problem. The second hardest feat is the willingness to get help. I have often marveled at how police officers, whose careers are centered on helping others, have so much trouble accepting help.

OFFICER WORK HOURS, STRESS AND FATIGUE

Law enforcement officers commonly work extended hours in ever-changing environments that can cause great mental and physical stress.

Enduring fatigue for a long period of time may lead to chronic fatigue syndrome, a health problem characterized by extreme fatigue that does not improve with bed rest and continues to worsen with physical and mental activity.

 Fatigue can:

• Impair an officer's mental and physical ability.
• Create a cycle of fatigue. 
• Limit job performance.
• Damage an officer's health.

Cycle of Fatigue

Fatigue arises primarily from inadequate sleep — both the quantity and quality of sleep.

Officers get inadequate sleep when they experience a break in their circadian rhythms, the sleep/wake cycle all living organisms require to maintain good health.

Circadian rhythms impact a person's biochemical, physiological and behavioral processes. External cues such as daylight or noise help modulate a person's circadian rhythms, generating a series of internal responses that cause sleeping and waking. Changes in external cues can effect a person's mental and physical disposition — one common example is the experience of jet lag.

Continual breaks in circadian rhythm can cause serious mental and physical fatigue. This fatigue diminishes people's mental and physical health, and impairs their ability to deal with stressful situations. For police officers, this gives way to a cycle of fatigue that decreases their ability to perform their job effectively.

 CAUSES OF OFFICER STRESS AND FATIGUE

Enduring stress for a long period of time can lead to anxiety, depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD is a psychological condition marked by an inability to be intimate, inability to sleep, increased nightmares, increased feelings of guilt and reliving the event.

For law enforcement officers, stress can increase fatigue to the point that decision-making is impaired and officers cannot properly protect themselves or citizens.

Factors That Can Cause Stress and Fatigue for Law Enforcement Officers

Work-related factors might include: 

• Poor management.
• Inadequate or broken equipment.
• Excessive overtime.
• Frequent rotating shifts 
• Regular changes in duties — for example, spending one day filling out paperwork and the next intervening in a violent domestic dispute.

Individual factors might include:

• Family problems.
• Financial problems.
• Health problems.
• Taking second jobs to make extra income.

 IMPACT OF SLEEP DEPRIVATION ON POLICE PERFORMANCE

Sleep deprivation is comparable to excessive drinking. A sleep deprivation study found that not sleeping for 17 hours impaired a person's motor skills to an extent equivalent to having an alcohol toxicity of 0.05 percent. Not sleeping for 24 hours was equivalent to a toxicity level of 0.10 percent. This level of deprivation would impair speech, balance, coordination and mental judgment.

Sleep deprivation can cause work-related accidents. It is believed that four out of eight officers involved in on-the-job accidents and injuries were impaired because of fatigue. Such accidents include automobile crashes that were due to officers' impaired eye-hand coordination and propensity to nod-off behind the wheel. Other work related injuries come from accidents that occur when officers have impaired balance and coordination.

Research shows that fatigued officers:

• Use more sick leave.
• Practice inappropriate uses of force more frequently.
• Become involved in more vehicle accidents.
• Experience more accidental injuries.
• Have more difficulty dealing with community members and other law enforcement agencies.
• Have a higher likelihood of dying in the line of duty.

Despite the impact of fatigue, many officers continue to work double shifts, triple shifts and second jobs. Some work well over 1,000 hours of overtime a year. Excessive work with inadequate rest over a long period of time can make officers sleep-deprived — truth be known most of officers report an average of 6.5 hours of sleep or less.

HOW FATIGUE AFFECTS HEALTH

Fatigue can harm an officer's mental health by:

• Increasing mood swings.
• Impairing judgment.
• Decreasing an officer's adaptability to certain situations.
• Heightening an officer's sense of threat.
• Increasing anxiety or depression.
• Increasing the chances of mental illness (e.g., officers may develop post-traumatic stress disorder or bipolar disorder).

Fatigue can harm an officer's physical health by:

• Reducing eye-hand coordination.
• Causing an officer to gain weight.
• Causing pain (e.g., backaches, headaches).
• Making an officer unable to relax (e.g., cause restless sleep, provoke heightened alert response).
• Causing gastrointestinal problems (e.g., loss of appetite, abdominal distress or ulcers).
• Damaging the cardiovascular system (e.g., causing heart disease, arteriosclerosis or congestive heart failure).

PREVENTING OFFICE FATIGUE

Law enforcement officers usually do not speak up about how stress affects their lives. Most departments have an unspoken code of silence about the stress and strain that comes with police work. For most officers, the work ethic and culture of law enforcement appears to accept fatigue as part of the job.

Additionally, managers do not always see how overtime causes work-related injuries and accidents. And many police officers are willing to risk their health because overtime provides additional income.

Some ways police agencies could avoid officer fatigue is:

• Encouraging officers to engage in physical activity.
• Encouraging officers to take time away from work.
• Avoiding mandatory overtime hours.
• Discouraging officers from taking on second jobs or moonlighting.
• Creating schedules and policies that minimize overtime and shift rotation.
• Using technology or policies that reduce overtime. These technological changes might include:
• Using laptop devices in cars to write reports.
• Using a "call in" reporting system to deal with certain calls for service.
• Allowing officers to process paperwork on calls for service at a later time.

10-HOUR SHIFTS OFFER COST SAVINGS AND OTHER BENEFITS TO LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES

Police executives can improve morale and reduce overtime costs by offering officers the option of working 10-hour shifts. Importantly, 10-hour shifts do not adversely affect performance, according to research.

SLEEP DISORDERS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS

Overview

With ever-changing schedules, overtime, and overnight shifts, it is not surprising that some police officers suffer from sleep disorders. Sleep disorders, which are typically associated with poor health, performance and safety outcomes, are twice as prevalent among police officers compared to the general public - and a new study suggests that they remain largely undiagnosed and untreated.

Facts on Sleep Disorders

The most common sleep disorder is obstructive sleep apnea. 

But the potential risks to officers — and the general public — due to fatigue are even more common. Excessive sleepiness is common among police officers, whether they have sleep disorders or not.

Impact on Officer Safety

Officers with sleep disorders have a higher risk of falling asleep while driving, committing an error or safety violation attributable to fatigue, and experiencing uncontrolled anger towards a suspect. These officers would be more likely fail to report committing a serious administrative error.

 NOT SO OBVIOUS POLICE STRESS

  
Police Stress, Chronic Stress, Obscure Stressors, Traffic Stops, Isolation and What Can Be Done is the focus of this guide. But first let’s discuss some of the basics of stress.
 
POLICE STRESS IN GENERAL
Police officers have one of the highest suicide rates in the nation, possibly the highest. They have a high divorce rate, about second in the nation. They are problem drinkers about twice as often as the general population. The facts are warning signals for unseen problems that are not being handled. Clearly, police work is stressful.

The three indexes of stress are intertwined for police officers. Police officials need to recognize the importance of these facts and provide policies and programs to reduce stress in these areas.

CHRONIC STRESS
Police stress is neither always unique nor obvious. Almost any single stressor in police work can be found in another occupation. What are unique are all the different stressors in one job. Many people see the dangers of acute stressors such as post shooting trauma and have programs dealing with them. These stressors are easy to see because of the intense emotional strain a person suffers. But what about the not so obvious, chronic stressors; are they important?

Chronic stress has at least two effects on people. First, prolonged stress causes people to regress. Their psychological growth reverses, and they become more immature. They rapidly become more childish and primitive. A common example is a sick person who is miserable and in pain for several days. Any wife will agree that her husband becomes self-centered, whiny and irritable; he expects constant attention and care. He behaves like a young, selfish child. People naturally regress during chronic discomfort.

Second, chronic stress numbs people's sensitivity. They can't stand to continually see human misery. They must stop feeling or they won't survive. The mind has this defense mechanism so people can continue working in horrible situations. If they kept their normal sensitivity, they would fall apart. As they become insensitive to their own suffering, they become insensitive to the suffering of others. When treated with indignity they lose not only a sense of their own dignity but also the dignity of others. The pain of others stops bothering them, and they are no longer bothered when they hurt others.

Police officers encounter stressors in call after call which saps their strength. Debilitation from this daily stress accumulates making officers more vulnerable to traumatic incidents and normal pressures of life. The weakening process is often too slow to see; neither a person nor his friends are aware of the damage being done.

Programs for acute stress are important but are limited in their value for two reasons. First, they are a reaction to trauma that has occurred; an officer is already suffering. Important support can be given to the officer, but almost nothing can be done to prevent an incident that causes trauma. How does a police official stop an officer's partner from being killed next to him? Second, few officers are involved in traumatic incidents in a year compared with the whole department which meets stress in call after call.

If chronic stressors are identified, then police officials can take proactive steps. They can do something before an officer becomes another suicide statistic. Departments should stop making artificial distinctions between job-related and personal problems. The two are interwoven and contribute to each other. The end result is a group of people under the greatest stress in any job in America.

OBSCURE STRESSORS
What are the chronic stressors of day to day police work? They vary among departments, shifts and people. Some are common and need to be named. This article describes only three sources of repeating stress. It doesn't discuss all police stress but gives the gist about obscure stress.

TRAFFIC STOPS
Police officers stop cars during a week for various reasons. They may hear excuses to gain their sympathies or indignities to demean them. A certain percentage of the people in the stops try to kill or injure the officers, yet officers are expected to be friendly at best or neutral at worst. A common view of police work is that we are all members of the community working for the safety and prosperity of everyone. Even in a traffic stop, a police officer is expected to work with the driver for the good of the community. After all isn't the driver a good person who has merely made a small, temporary mistake?

If an officer approaches a car with a friendly attitude, his guard is down. He can't keep his defenses up and view a person as his friend at the same time. People are on guard against those they view as enemies, not friends. If an officer continually approaches cars with a friendly attitude, the chief will eventually get a call that one of his officers is lying in a pool of blood on the street.

If an officer approaches a driver thinking this might be the one who attacks him, he will come across as rude, gruff and uncaring. It's hard to be on guard for your life and appear friendly at the same time. When an officer approaches cars with a guarded attitude, the chief will get a call that he has a cynical, brutal cop who has no business serving the community.

The officer is in a dilemma. Considering someone a friend or an enemy produces opposite mental states. A person can't hold both attitudes at the same time. He is caught in a double bind, a no win situation. For an officer the situation is chronic stress with a cumulative effect of breaking down his defenses and making him a prey to other pressures and to diseases such as ulcers. The stress of double bind situations is well documented in psychological research.

PROFESSIONAL VS. MILITARY CONFLICT

A police department is both a professional and military organization, and these two aspects oppose each other. The classic professions of history are doctor, lawyer and minister. They require a basic education, a bachelor's degree, and a three year professional school of about 90 hours. The professional is then licensed and endorsed by an agency. He is considered to be an expert in his field and is expected to use his expertise for the good of his clients. He has much discretion in how he serves the people who call upon him. The military is opposite. The people are well trained, but the chain of command tells them how to do almost everything. Orders, rules and regulations cover every facet of life in the military. Everything is done by the book with very little discretion left for people doing their jobs.

Police officers aren't professionals in the classic sense, but they are similar. An officer must have a minimum amount of education before he goes through an academy and field training. He is commissioned and in some places licensed. His duty is to use his training and authority for the good of the community. When someone calls the police, he expects the officer to make decisions to handle the situation. The officer decides what he can and should do, but he runs head-on into orders, rules and regulations. Police departments have learned from experience the value of having procedures and policies. Yet the events of life are too complex to handle by preset rules. People must evaluate situations and make decisions.

The problem comes for the officer when he is at the scene of a call. After learning the facts, he will decide what course of action is required to meet the needs of the people. Often that course does not follow procedures. If he follows procedures exactly, he knows he won't fully help the people and is frustrated. The people will think he is shirking his responsibility and will be frustrated. If the officer follows his own judgment, he is taking a risk. If everything goes well, he is safe, but if things go badly, he is subject to discipline because he didn't follow procedures. The community and department expect officers to use judgment, but when they do, there is a danger they will be disciplined - another double bind.

Isolation
When people are isolated, they become disoriented and confused. Their behavior changes drastically. They can become apathetic to the point of illness or death. Social isolation in police officers fosters the attitude that "it's us against them". They begin to view the public like the soldiers at MyLai viewed those civilians; they're the enemy. As officers become socially isolated they suffer effects similar to physical isolation. The effects of social isolation are most prominent in the first six years of an officer's career.

Officers tend to associate only with other officers. When they go out with another couple, it is often another police couple. Officers want their spouses to go to police parties with them, but when their spouses want them to go to their office party, the answer is no. Officers make excuses that they don't want to hear the old ticket story again or they just don't fit in.

Police officers learn street wisdom. They develop confidence in themselves to handle situations in practical ways. Officers begin to look down on others because they don't have savvy in the real world. Police mostly see the seamy side of life that other people don't see, and since other people don't understand this side of life, officers feel superior. Ironically officers are the ones who are losing real world wisdom; the world isn't comprised only of criminals and fools. They judge the world from a limited perspective and see everything with a jaundiced eye.

Police work lacks balance. A doctor loses a patient today but brings a baby into the world tomorrow. Most jobs have a healthy balance; the good things are mixed with the bad. Not so in police work. In call after call officers only see criminals or people making fools of themselves. The police aren't called to a reunion party when everyone is doing right. They are called when someone gets drunk and decides he can whip anyone around. The officer making the arrest sees the man then, not when he is working hard for his family. It's not amazing that some officers think that ninety-eight percent of the people in the world are no good, and the two percent who are good are the police.

The examples given are stresses that police don't normally recognize. Anyone in police work can think of common frustrations such as seeing criminals getting out of jail on bond in a short time or being released completely. The point is there are chronic stresses in police work, and departments need to do something about them, not just the obvious traumatic incidents.

What Can Be Done?
Police officials should stop distinguishing between personal problems and job-related problems. Many departments look closely into the personal lives of applicants during background investigations. Departments won't hire people who have major personal problems. They understand the importance of a person's personal life in police work. After the person is hired a strange thing happens. Many departments forget the importance of a police officer's personal life when it comes time to help him. The fact remains that police work affects an officer's personal life, especially the family, and his personal life affects job performance. Any separation of the two is unreal.

Officials can't stop stress in police work, but they can recognize it and help officers in three areas. First, they can provide help to individual officers. Second, family life can be helped. Third, the stress caused by the police organization itself can be reduced.

Direct help for individual officers can come in many forms. Every large department should have a psychologist and a chaplain for the officers and ensure that insurance plans have good provisions for outpatient counseling with outside psychologists, psychiatrists and therapists. Doubly important is confidentiality; the department should not know when an officer uses a department counselor or insurance for counseling.

Programs for individuals often help reduce organizational stress. When a department provides a psychologist and a chaplain, the officers see that someone at the top does understand their problems and is trying to help. This perception is much better than the attitude of many officers that no one at the top cares. Even worse officers often believe that administration is out to get them. Departments need to have policies for transferring people temporarily for family problems. The inconveniences of helping an officer for a short time far outweigh the problems of handling a police suicide or a lawsuit because an officer exploded during a critical call.

Traumatic incidents such as post shooting trauma are acute stressors but should be mentioned. Services that help the acute, individual stress of traumatic incidents also help chronic, organizational stress. When an officer shoots and kills someone, he isn't given time to deal with his trauma. He must protect the crime scene, make arrests, notify the proper people and tell officials what happened. He maintains the image of being in complete control. Usually he has to tell the story several times to his supervisors, homicide, internal affairs and any special sections in the department. Other officers have their jobs to do and can't take time to support the officer personally.

The department can help with procedures that support the officer. Get other officers to handle the work as soon as possible and get the officer out of the public eye. Don't make him relive the incident three to six times in official interviews. Let everyone needing a complete story interview him at one time. Even better, let one section interview him and get all the information needed for the whole department. Start a traumatic incidents corps or a procedure in which someone can be present to give personal support to the officer. A traumatic incident corps is comprised of officers who have previously been in traumatic incidents. They are trained to help officers going through trauma and are called immediately to the side of an officer involved in such an incident. The members of the traumatic incident corps are volunteers who help in addition to their normal duties.

Officers and supervisors should be taught about the symptoms and effects of job stress. Proactive training helps ward off stress when officers encounter it. When an officer suffers from stress, reactive counseling and training such as biofeedback should be available.

Departments can reduce officer isolation and do community relations at the same time by supporting community activities such as youth athletics or charitable organizations. Official support could be given for officers to be coaches and referees in leagues. Officials should actively look for positions on boards of directors for community organizations such as mental health associations and seek to place officers as representatives of the Police Department. Police will get balance in their lives and citizens will better understand the police. A cooperative attitude will grow on both sides.

Family life can be helped in several ways. Counseling through the psychologist and chaplain should be available for family members. Orientation seminars for spouses will let them learn about the department first hand. Spouses don't understand the department and often have a biased opinion after hearing officers gripe. Police appreciation dinners sponsored by the community and the department are excellent. They give officers and their families a chance to sit down in a congenial atmosphere with the people who appreciate them.

The police organization is very important in the lives of its officers and often creates stress unwittingly. Orders and regulations tend to sound oppressive in their pronouncements when they don't need to. If a passage mainly gives information for handling a situation, then why word all of it in the imperative voice? Save the imperative for imperative orders. Orders and regulations can be reviewed by someone trained to see the human impact that certain wordings have on people.

Poor communication causes chiefs and officers as much grief as anything. Departments can improve by having a consultant design a complete system of communication. A simple well-written newsletter for information, not propaganda, bridges the communication gap. In short, the organization needs to remove its own problems before pointing at individual officers and putting all the blame on them.

Police officers are suffering from stress, and one result is lessened service to the community. All police stress needs to be defined and combated, not just a few obvious ones. The task is difficult, but the rewards for doing it surpass the effort.

POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER

Post traumatic stress disorder can occur if you witness or are subject to severe trauma. As a Police Officer, you will attend calls where violence has, or is about to erupt.

These calls include, but are not limited to: car accidents, industrial accidents, robberies, sexual assaults, murder.

Can you imagine going to a call where a mother has thrown her newborn baby out a window of a 10 story building because it was crying too loudly?

Or going to a home where the father has murdered the entire family with a knife because the "voices told him to?"

What if you are walking the beat and come across a gun point robbery right in front of you?

What if you shoot him? What if you kill him?

Attending these calls on a constant basis and seeing the damage caused can basically, "screw with your mind."

It's likely that you would be affected by this, although everyone is different. Not everyone will suffer PTSD.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder has many symptoms, but they can be classified into these 3 categories:

- Reliving the specific traumatic experience

- Refusal to acknowledge memories, events, or anything related to the trauma

- Increased anxiety and expectation for tragedy/trauma

Police Officers often times unknowingly develop a warped sense of humor. They may make comments that others would find inappropriate, or make jokes even in the most horrible situation.

The Officer is using humor as a defense mechanism in an attempt to combat the stress.

If you are constantly bombarded by images of pain and carnage, you must develop a way to prevent it from getting to you.

Humor is one way of doing this, although many citizens will not understand or appreciate this.

Police Departments have counseling/assistance programs to assist officers who are dealing with emotional problems.

As far as I know, visitations with the counselors are confidential and information is not supposed to be disclosed to anyone else in the Department unless it is believed that you could pose a danger to others.

If you one day suffer from PTSD, it is advisable that you seek help. Check into the Department program to determine how they handle personal information on this level.

I like to believe that officers can be open about problems that they are having without fear of how their colleagues will treat them, but unfortunately, that's not always the case.

Just be sure that whoever you talk to, and whoever you seek out for help is someone that you trust.

Regardless, the MOST IMPORTANT THING IS TO GET HELP. Don't let this slowly destroy your life.

 FIVE WAYS POLICE COPE WITH STRESS

Police officers undergo elevated levels of stress. Several coping mechanisms can help reduce and effectively combat stress police officers endure.

Not many have an accurate understanding of what police officers go through while working in high stress and dangerous environments. Police officers are taken for granted and people rarely think of the personal, mental, and physical sacrifices that police make in order to protect our community.

Police officers were nameless and faceless people separated from the rest of society. They are the enforcers of the laws our society deems as appropriate behavior - - even if it contradicts what an individual officer believes.

If it’s hard for some to see that police endure great amounts of stress, think about the fact that police have to deal with the potential to get hurt or killed, being held liable, having alternating shifts, having less free time, and never escaping the police mentally, all are reasons that police officers face insurmountable stress and pressure over their career. Problems also come to police offices from alternative directions that cause even higher levels of stress family, public, department, internally and environmentally. Stress, as a whole, must be seen in the entire context to which it exists physically, mentally, socially, politically, culturally, comparatively, and environmentally. Primarily the best way to help to combat the increased stress level visited upon police officers is where officers have a better social support system, and can find available resources to help them realize the sources of stress and techniques to lessen the pressure. Other people, who lack such a system, may negatively suffer through isolation and estrangement from others, thus increasing a chance for depression, abuse, and possibly suicide.

There are two types of categories of stress: acute and chronic. Firstly, acute stress can occur as a result of short=term problems or occasional events., like witnessing a crime in progress, having someone close to you die, or dealing with a specific issue that can cause temporary, but adaptable stress.

Stress reactions vary by characteristics of the personality, social support structure, life experiences, years of service, level of education, use of coping strategies, the intensity of the stressful event, and any unique features of the organization. Nevertheless, five major strategies officers can use will enable them to take an active role in reducing their stress.

1, At home, maintaining a proper diet, exercising regularly, getting adequate sleep, having a stable and communicative relationship with family members and friends outside of the police force, and prioritizing items of importance can help sustain a healthy home environment. At work, having time to exercise, meeting members of the community, taking adequate breaks, and having the opportunity to discuss freely personal issues with counselors, superiors, or other officers can maintain a high level of support.

1. Remember that open communication, without fear of judgment, is essential because police stress is not going to go away. If anything, strong social support systems are important in combating personal and work-related stresses.
2. When having a stressful episode, remember to change your present state of mind by engaging in and activity that usually relaxes or outs you in a more pleasant mental state. Change internal communications from the negative to the positive – instead of rehashing what is wrong, reaffirm the things that went well or are going well in your life; find the good in a situation.
3. Departmental leaders can help limiting the amount of stress police officers encounter by being supportive both to the officers and their families; sponsoring events such as BBQs. games, and picnics.

5 Having counseling services that provide confidentiality of the officer for helping them cope with stresses outside the control of the police organizational structure.

Be on the look out for the signs and symptoms of stress. Fatigue, muscle, tremors, vomiting, grinding of teeth, nausea, profuse sweating, chest pain, rapid heart rate, twitches, difficulty breathing, dizziness, diarrhea, black outs, headaches, anxiety, severe panic, guilt, uncertainty, fear, depression, denial, anger, irritability, withdrawal, insomnia, anti-social behavior, exhaustion, emotional outbursts, and even substance abuse.

Although stress is partially reduced by the professional knowledge officers use to deal with their work, they cope by using a number of less formal anxiety reducing, and often unconscious, strategies. The majority of these occur in the station house, a place where they find a laid=back atmosphere and company.

Whatever our situation is, if you are stressed, you don’t have to combat your feelings alone. Talk to someone about what you are feeling; get it off of your chest. Of course, there is no quick cure all for stress; there is always work to be done. However with proper coping mechanisms, support, and counseling services, you can beat stress.

 Other Web Resources on Officer Stress and Fatigue

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Provides information on workplace safety and health, healthy living and injuries related to violence.

The National Center on Sleep Disorders Research
Established by the National Institutes of Health to combat health concerns for individuals who suffer from sleep disorders. The center provides research and training that addresses sleep disorders.

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health: Work Schedules: Shift Work and Long Work Hours
A center funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that examines and eliminates work-related stress, and the disease, injuries and fatalities linked to that stress.

National Institute of Mental Health
Offers information on mental health topics, including anxiety and depression. Offers links to local mental health services and clinical trials.