Stress Factors in Law Enforcement This Brief

Stress Factors in Law Enforcement

This brief paper will look at some of the issues and circumstances that create stress in the lives of law enforcement officers. In particular some chronic stressors will be examined that contribute to higher than normal rates of suicide, divorce and alcoholism in the profession.

There is little debate over the contention that law enforcement officers face inordinate amounts of stress during the course of their duties. For instance, police officers have one of the highest rates of suicide in the nation. While the national rate of divorce is approximately fifty percent, the divorce rate for police officers is between sixty and seventy percent and evidence indicates that alcohol abuse is about twice the rate of the general population (Haines, 2003).

Discussion

There are many programs available to deal with situations that produce acute stress, such as post shooting trauma. What is not as obvious is the effect of chronic stress. There are two major consequences of chronic stress. First, prolonged stress causes psychological growth reversals. Individuals under constant distress tend to become self-centered, whiney, and irritable. People naturally regress during chronic stress.

A second consequence is a numbing of sensitivity. Individuals constantly exposed to human misery must stop feeling or they will not survive. If they kept their normal sensitivity, they would fall apart. On the other hand, 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. Eventually the others pain stops bothering them and they are no longer bothered when they hurt others. This defense mechanism is necessary so people can continue working in horrible situations. If they kept their normal sensitivity, they would fall apart.

The daily grind of police work exposes officers to constant stressors that slowly accumulate making them more vulnerable to traumatic incidents and normal pressures of life. Often this process is too slow to see and neither the individual nor his or her constituents are aware of the damage being done.