Some recently published research looking at wellness promotion and suicide prevention programs for police officers and active-duty military personnel found some interesting and perhaps unusually useful results. In this article the research has been distilled down to the most important takeaways.
Looking at police officers in the United States, Thoen, Dodson, Manzo, Piña-Watson, and Trejos-Castillo (2020) found compelling support for a top-down approach to promoting resilience. In it, Thoen et al. found within a random sample of 55 city police agencies, employee assistance programs (EAP) and counseling services were the most common resources. In a follow-up study, they recruited 144 police officers from those agencies and found that upwards of 25% of the police officers were unaware their agency had a wellness promotion program, and approximately 33% of police officers did not perceive their department to be supportive of officers’ resilience. The authors highlight perceptions of agency support are important because police officers who viewed their departments as supportive of officers’ resilience also reported significantly lower occupational stress, higher levels of positive emotion, and greater levels of physical health. Together, these two studies suggest to police agency administrators that top-down approaches to resilience may yield beneficial outcomes for individual officers.
It is widely known in our law enforcement community that peer pressure and the stigma associated with seeking help are monolithic barriers to police officers obtaining treatment. From research conducted with military service members, Britt, Wilson, Sawhney, and Black (2020) used longitudinal data collected among 349 U.S. active-duty military personnel to examine perceived unit climate of support for resilience as a predictor of attitudes toward help-seeking 3 months later. The authors found that a more positively perceived unit climate of support for resilience predicted decreases in help-seeking stigma and improved attitudes toward seeking resilience treatment. This study highlights the role fellow military personnel may play in encouraging one another to access treatment services. The study suggests fostering a culture of help-seeking within squads, troops, sections, units etc., may lead to a greater openness to engaging with treatment.
This research supports our belief that cultural changes require a top down, bottom up and inside out effort. A single direction effort will fail, and the effort will fall short of producing a complete cultural shift and leave everyone frustrated and demoralized. Reducing the stigma associated with law enforcement officers seeking treatment is the first step in eliminating it and treatment is the only way to mitigate the trauma-related workplace injuries.
Breaking down the barriers to treatment must take a top down and bottom-up approach. First, agency administrators must make a constant and concerted effort to promote all the resiliency resources officers have at their disposal. Those efforts could come in the form monthly e-mails, postings on bulletin boards throughout the department, newsletters mailed home to spouses and health-promoting events like free heart-healthy food days. The possibilities to promote resilience within a department are nearly limitless.
Developing advocates from within the ranks of the department may not be as daunting as one might first think. Members of the peer support teams would be a good beginning. Joining forces with adjacent departments with peer support teams to promote events, awareness, and strategies would also be a good start towards promoting conversations about resilience. Normalizing treatment is the goal and smashing the stigma associated with asking for help is the objective!
TAKEAWAYS
- Administrators can create a culture of resilience with a comprehensive effort to promote their agency’s wellness programs.
- Resiliency efforts should include spouses.
- Sponsor healthy-living days at work to include samples of heart-healthy and stress-reducing foods.
- Create a culture promoting resilience through monthly e-mails, bulletin boards, and special events.
- Facilitate the collaboration of peer support teams between adjacent departments and usher in a new level of mutual aid.
Stay safe and healthy,
Team MCRS
Building on these ideas, future articles will describe ways to go beyond gestures and e-mails to communicate the importance an agency has for the wellbeing of their officers.