Police Officers Suffering from PTSD

Traumatic Stress While on Duty and PTSD
Literature Review
There is some connection between traumatic stress for officers on duty and the development of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, as Chopko, Palmieri and Adams (2018) show in their study of nearly 200 law enforcement officers. While the connection appears evident, the nature of the onset of symptoms differs, as does the manner in which positive growth following the onset of PTSD occurs. This should not be surprising as Chopko and Schwartz (2012) illustrate in an earlier study that the correlation of career traumatization and symptomatology among active duty officers is diverse and dependent upon a number variables, such as personal relationships and the level of threat faced while on the job. What exactly defines a threat on the job, moreover, is also different according to the perspective of the individual officer. Andersen and Papazoglou (2014) demonstrate that “interactions with a member of a different cultural group is often defined by threat and anxiety” (p. 182). In a multicultural society, cross-group threats may be more common for some officers than for others—but individual officers may also view some environments as more threatening than others might. Perception, background, experience, culture, and ethnicity can all play a part in the extent to which a threat is felt. This reason might help to explain why Weiss, Brunet, Best et al. (2010) only found a modest relationship between stressful or traumatic incidents and PTSD symptoms in officers.
Indications of a relationship between PTSD and the traumatized stress of officers have been seen in police details. Indeed, one of the greatest threats facing police is the effect of PTSD, as it can cause officers to lose the ability to interact appropriately with colleagues, peers, family and community members (Andersen & Papazoglou, 2014; Chopko et al., 2018). PTSD typically arises following a traumatic experience and the main symptoms appear when the individual is faced with stress related to that experience in its wake (Chopko and Schwartz, 2012; Plat, Westerveld, Hutter et al., 2013). The stress can be substantially debilitating and can impair an officer from performing the duties related to law enforcement, and that is why officers who routinely or frequently encounter traumatic experiences the PTSD rates can be high (Plat et al., 2013). However, there is no easy way of evaluating what types of incidents pose a traumatic risk for officers. Car wrecks, murders, deaths, rapes, drug crime, violent assault—all of these and none of these might pose a risk to certain officers; the literature on what causes PTSD is limited.
Nonetheless, the effects of PTSD and the hazards of policing on police-community relations can be that officers are reluctant to engage with the public and the public is reluctant to engage with officers. As a result police-community relations become strained as both sides fail to connect with one another. Police officers can struggle to cope with the stress they are experiencing and administrators can struggle to identify the causes of the symptoms (Chopko et al., 2018). Being aware of how police officers can be impacted negatively while on duty by stressful environments in which they can undergo a trauma is important for being able to know how to treat officers in the aftermath of such experiences. Cone, Li, Kornblith et al. (2015) show that a tentative link exists between traumatic experiences and the onset of PTSD in police officers: officers who experience a catastrophic incident while on duty are at a greater risk of having PTSD, according to their study of officers who assisted in the tragedy of 9/11 in New York City. The negative effects that they experienced in the wake of that catastrophe stemmed from the development of PTSD symptoms. While 9/11 surely would meet anyone’s criteria for a catastrophe, other incidents and experiences may occur for officers in the line of duty that are not quite as sensationally catastrophic as that one, but they still might serve as an example of catastrophe. Understanding this, however, requires more information on the subject.
What is certain from a review of the literature is that the outcome for police-community relations breakdown as a result of hazards like PTSD is that people may choose to avoid law enforcement. The problem with this is that it can compound an already sensitive situation and lead to officers experiencing more strain and stress on top of the PTSD symptoms they are already dealing with (Chopko et al., 2018). Martin and Martin (2017) point out that police suffering from PTSD can become so depressed and dissatisfied with their mental health that they can turn to suicide as the only way out of their suffering. This is especially tragic because as Plat et al. (2013) indicate, treatments are available for officers: it is just a matter of recognizing the symptoms first and foremost and understanding how to conduct the right intervention for the right person. Knowing when to monitor officers and how to assess them following a particularly catastrophic incident on the job could be a step forward in preventing the risk of PTSD leading to police suicide (Martin & Martin, 2017). Preventing PTSD is really the first step, however, and to prevent the onset of PTSD it is necessary to know the conditions and environments that help to cause it.
The trends in PTSD rise significantly when officers have emotional issues and/or mental health issues that also require treatment. Officers can suffer from depression, isolation, alienation, marginalization, and a number of other effects that stem from on the job activities, especially if the environment in which they are working is one that requires them to engage in high-stress situations with little support or coping mechanisms made available to them afterwards (Martin & Martin, 2017). Treating officers with PTSD who suffer these types of situations requires interventions that are effective and that can turn traumatic stress episodes into growth experiences. This is often easier said than done as some officers are resistant to treatment because of a personal code, personal feelings about needing counseling, and perceptions of mental health issues being taboo (Chopko & Schwartz, 2012). The more that the concept of taboo enters into the psychology of officers, the less likely they are to want to expose themselves to others as being in need of counseling or as suffering from a mental health affliction. Not only can this fear lead them to suppress symptoms or try to hide them from others, but it can also lead to more prolonged harm down the road if the symptoms go untreated and the officers are not provided with interventions such as cognitive behavioral therapy or the support groups that can help them to address the underlying trauma.
Helping officers to cope with traumatic stress and to treat the symptoms of PTSD is imperative for getting them back to work so that they can operate effectively and efficiently on the job. This is possible as Plat et al. (2013) and Chopko et al. (2018) have demonstrated but it requires the ability to turn a stressful experience into an opportunity for growth—and getting to this point requires that officers be willing to undergo evaluation and participate in intervention strategies that will ultimately be designed to empower them and give them the confidence to attend to themselves and to the environments in which they work with greater stability. Officers who experience career traumatization on the other hand and live with the symptoms of PTSD for a long time are at significant risk to themselves and to others (Chopko & Schwartz, 2012). Breaking the cycle of stress for officers whose careers are defined by absorbing it and pushing the symptoms down, repressing them or attempting to cope with them via self-medication can end in disastrous effects at the end of an officer’s career.
In conclusion, the research shows that PTSD is a common disorder found among police officers and the symptoms can vary from officer to officer. Likewise, the causes of PTSD can vary from officer to officer and situation to situation. For every cause of trauma experienced by a police officer, there is a unique story to be told and one that needs to be addressed individually. There are no blanket treatments or interventions that work for all officers—each one has to be approached individually with a treatment plan designed that is appropriate for them (Martin & Martin, 2017). The challenges of counselors and therapists in treating officers are numerous and depend upon being able to: 1) identify the symptoms at an early stage, 2) enlist the help of the officers themselves in forming the diagnosis, 3) discovering the underlying trauma so that it can be addressed in counseling sessions, 4) erasing the stigma associated with mental health conditions among officers. This last can be one of most difficult challenges to overcome as the culture in policing is one that celebrates a certain amount of bravery, courage, strength and heroism—and for an officer to admit that some care is required to help get the emotions and mental state up to par is to admit to being vulnerable (Anderson & Papazoglou, 2014). The culture of policing is not one that celebrates and honors vulnerability, so this issue can also play a part in how well PTSD symptoms are treated in this field.
References
Andersen, J. P., & Papazoglou, K. (2014). Friends under fire: Cross-cultural relationships and trauma exposure among police officers. Traumatology, 20(3), 182-190. doi:10.1037/h0099403
Chopko, B. A., & Schwartz, R. C. (2012). Correlates of career traumatization and symptomatology among active-duty police officers. Criminal Justice Studies, 25(1), 83-95. doi:10.1080/1478601X.2012.657905
Chopko, B. A., Palmieri, P. A., & Adams, R. E. (2018). Relationships among traumaticexperiences, PTSD, and posttraumatic growth for police officers: A path analysis. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, And Policy, 10(2), 183-189. doi:10.1037/tra0000261
Cone, J. E., Li, J., Kornblith, E., Gocheva, V., Stellman, S. D., Shaikh, A., ... & Bowler, R. M. (2015). Chronic probable PTSD in police responders in the World Trade Center Health Registry ten to eleven years after 9/11. American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 58(5), 483-493.
Martin, T. K., & Martin, R. H. (2017). Police Suicide and PTSD: Connection, Prevention, and Trends. Law Enforcement Executive Forum, 17(2), 27-42.
Plat, M. J., Westerveld, G. J., Hutter, R. C., Olff, M., Frings-Dresen, M. H., & Sluiter, J.K. (2013). Return to work: Police personnel and PTSD. Work, 46(1), 107-111. doi:10.3233/WOR-121578
Weiss, D. S., Brunet, A., Best, S. R., Metzler, T. J., Liberman, A., Pole, N., ... & Marmar, C. R. (2010). Frequency and severity approaches to indexing exposure to trauma: The Critical Incident History Questionnaire for police officers. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 23(6), 734-743.