Confrontations with aggression and mental health problems in police officers: The role of organizational stressors, life-events and previous mental health problems

The extent to which the frequency of facing aggression incidents is associated with mental health problems among police officers when organizational stressors, life-events, and previous mental health problems are taken into account is unclear. To elucidate this data from a longitudinal study of police officers was analyzed (N = 473). Mental health problems (MHPs) are here defined as severe anxiety, depression, hostility, burnout symptoms, and/or sleeping problems according the SCL-90–R and MBI. All MHPs were assessed at baseline and 27 months later. Logistic regression showed that serious threat was statistically significant associated with MHPs at follow-up among officers without MHPs at baseline, but not among those with MHPs at baseline. However, stepwise logistic regression showed that serious threat and/or physical aggression were not independently associated with MHPs at follow-up. Organizational stressors, that is, problems with colleagues were independent predictors in all analyses. Among the total study sample, previous MHPs were the strongest independent predictors. These findings suggest superiors should attend to the mental health, organizational stressors and life-events of their officers regularly and not only following critical incidents at work.

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Reference: 
Peter G. vander Velden, Rolf J. Kleber[...et al.] | 2010
In: Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy = ISSN 1942-9681 | 2 | 2 | 135-144
http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/tra/2/2/135/
Affiliation author(s): 
ARQ IVP (en)