Increasing Resilience in Police and Emergency Personnel

Strengthening Your Mental Armor

Stephanie M. Conn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781317193753
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Increasing Resilience in Police and Emergency Personnel illuminates the psychological, emotional, behavioral, and spiritual impact of police work on police officers, administrators, emergency communicators, and their families. Author Stephanie Conn, a clinician and researcher as well as a former police officer and dispatcher, debunks myths about weakness and offers practical strategies in plain language for police employees and their families struggling with traumatic stress and burnout. Sections of each chapter also offer guidance for frequently overlooked roles such as police administrators and civilian police employees. Using real-world anecdotes and exercises, this book provides strengths-based guidance to help navigate the many complex and sometimes difficult effects of police and emergency work.

Chapter 1

Are Police Resilient?

For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement. When we are no longer able to change a situation—just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer—we are challenged to change ourselves.

(Frankl, 2006, p. 112)

The preceding quote epitomizes resilience as it reflects acknowledging and accepting our limits as human beings and working within these confines to be our best selves. This optimistic stance on human potential underpins the information offered in this book, with specific suggestions for its application to a variety of life circumstances. This optimism is central to achieving resilience and reducing suffering. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, let’s talk about what we mean by “resilience.”

Resilience—a State or a Trait?

So, what is resilience? Is it something we have? Something we are born with? Something we develop? If we develop resilience, how do you go about doing that? Why do some develop it while others don’t? I think it’s important that I acknowledge these questions and make a point to tackle each of them in this book. I invite you to think about your questions and preconceptions about resiliency and consider how your responses might influence your actual resiliency.

First, resilience is the ability to bounce back from adversity. “Back” doesn’t mean that things will be restored to exactly as they were before. We can never have back what was, whether it was good or bad. People and situations are constantly evolving, so we have to consider a “bounce back” more in terms of restoration of our ability to function. How well we are able to function is a combination of factors such as how we are doing emotionally, physically, spiritually, and psychologically in various domains of our lives like work, family, and social lives. As you likely know, functioning is a rather complex concept with many moving parts.

Optimal functioning in each of these domains is difficult to achieve. Life is messy. There will be times when you excel in one domain and another one will suffer for it. Other times, one domain will demand more of you, which will cause you to neglect others. A prime example of this in police work is when there is a critical police incident such as a shooting or a non-operational (organizational) stressor like a promotional process. These events will place extra demands and stress on you, limiting the amount of time and mental energy you have to participate in other life roles. Accept this reality and embrace the temporary shift in priorities. If you notice that you are always spending your time on one domain at the expense of others, a change is likely needed. The neglect of other domains may or may not be intentional, but the effect is the same. Focusing too much on work weakens family and health. Focusing too much on family isn’t good for one’s career. Balance is key to succeeding in all areas of life. Therefore, part of “bouncing back” following an event means re-establishing balance in your life.

This, of course, assumes that there was a balance to begin with. It assumes that, prior to an event, you were in a state of optimal wellness. This is sometimes not the case. I have worked with individuals who have cited workplace “emergencies” as consuming all of their family time, only to discover that they were this way with every job they ever had, leading me to believe that this is a way of life, not an environmental reality. This way of life might be due to the individual’s addiction to work, addiction to drama, struggle to plan ahead because they are constantly putting out fires, or struggling to say “no” to others. These are some of the lifestyle patterns that contribute to suffering, making individuals more vulnerable to negative reactions to critical incidents and organizational stressors than those who have maintained a healthy lifestyle.

Other times, the chronicity of imbalance between life roles is due to being compromised in some way. Balance, like resilience, takes mental and physical energy, planning, and awareness. For those struggling with mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), it may seem impossible to muster up the energy to make a course correction to achieve life role balance. Making matters worse, many people struggle with mental health issues for ungodly amounts of time before acknowledging there is a problem, much less doing anything about it. I cannot count how many clients who have told me that they have struggled with their difficulty for years before getting help. There are many reasons for this and I will discuss them at length in Chapter 5.

Overwhelmingly, experts agree that resilience isn’t something you have or don’t have. It’s neither a state nor a trait, but a process. Like officer safety, physical fitness, or sobriety, it’s something that requires a daily commitment and actions in furtherance of this commitment. This should be fairly obvious, given that the objective of this book is to provide strategies for increasing resilience. Yes, some people have inherited temperaments that make them more adaptive to adversity. For instance, research shows that those with negative emotional states such as anxiety, depression, and anger have a higher risk of developing PTSD (Clark, 2005). Conversely, those with more positive emotionality tend to fare better (Clark, 2005). Don’t worry though, temperament can only take you so far. If you weren’t endowed with an ideal temperament, you can still be resilient.

To be clear, being resilient does not mean that you won’t develop a mental health issue such as PTSD. What it does mean is that you are better able to recover from it than if you were not resilient in the first place. This proposition sounds strange to some police employees I’ve spoken with. They don’t outright contest it, but there seems to be a look that says, “If a person were resilient, wouldn’t they prevent themselves from developing PTSD, depression, or marital difficulty in the first place?” My response to this question would be an unequivocal “no.” At times, there are circumstances which are so profoundly impactful, interrupting the body’s defense mechanisms and normal coping activities, rendering an individual vulnerable to psychological injury. I’ll discuss this at length in Chapter 2 but will offer an overview here to illustrate my point. Take, for example, a very traumatic event such as seeing a murdered child. The emotional part of the brain, the amygdala, will likely override the information-processing portion of the brain, the hippocampus, interrupting the individual’s ability to process the information so that healing can occur. As a result, the brain will mistakenly believe that the event is not over because it didn’t store the memory properly. The brain will send reminders of the event such as intrusive images and nightmares because it is designed to keep warning its host (you) of perceived danger until it registers that the event is over and the danger is gone. These reminders come from the primitive part of the brain and have evolutionary value. This is a prime example of the event being so horrific that the normal brain processes are being interrupted, and an evolutionary-based system, designed to enhance survival, wreaks havoc on the individual. A normally resilient individual may not be able to offset the physiological chain of events that I just described. However, a resilient person would take measures to promote healing from the psychological injury. A less resilient person would take measures to avoid or mask the signals coming from the brain, hoping that they would simply stop if they’re ignored. There are many ways individuals ignore these signals of danger from the brain such as drinking, sleeping, “retail therapy,” risk-taking, and so forth.

Police: Resilient or Plagued by Trauma and Denial?

Over the last few years, we have become increasingly aware of the impact of chronic stress and trauma on first responders. Due to anti-stigma campaigns and the courage of many first responders to speak about their experiences, we have been talking about mental health issues more now than we ever have. Overall, this is a welcome shift, and I hope it continues until the stigma is finally lifted. Despite the benefits, there could be unintended negative consequences to all of this talk. Are you still there? Bear with me and I will explain what I mean.

Some of the discussions about PTSD and other mental health issues in first responder’s work have been framed in a way that makes them sound as if it is inevitable that you will develop them. I don’t doubt that the reason for the strength of these discussions is owed to decades of these issues being downplayed or ignored by others. I recognize that, currently, these issues are still being downplayed and ignored, placing the onus of proving a work-related injury on persons who are already suffering. However, these discussions, and some of the organizational responses, may be unintentionally inflating the perceived incidence rates for these difficulties. Organizational practices that send a pathology-based message (Do this debriefing/training to avoid getting PTSD) are a disservice to police officers who would otherwise be well with their own coping and wellness strategies. Psychological research may also be adding to the perception of police officers being unwell, since research with police populations, similar to the general population, has largely been disorder-focused and deficit-based, highlighting difficulties in police officers instead of their strengths. It offers us a skewed view of police officers, their coping skills, and their potential to be resilient. The media also perpetuates the notion that police officers are not doing well. Consider the nature of news headlines. Which headline do you think would grab more attention: “PTSD rates in police are escalating” or “Only a small percentage of police officers have PTSD”? The last headline isn’t nearly as exciting as the first one. Exciting headlines sell.

The majority of first responders do not develop PTSD or other mental health disorders. This holds true even after recognizing that mental health issues are underreported in policing. Recent research (including my own) shows that police officers are taking measures to cope better and have healthier lifestyles. Many folks have come to my office, having read about a mental health difficulty, oftentimes informed by Dr Google, and believe that they have one disorder or another. Often-times, their “symptoms” are normal responses to abnormal events and will go away on their own or with some small changes in thinking or coping styles. Unfortunately, I think this trend of “What’s wrong with me?” is exacerbated by insurance companies who require a diagnosis before they will reimburse for counseling.

With regard to mental health training and debriefings offered by police organizations, don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. These practices are still helpful to many officers by empowering them with information that normalizes their responses and connects them to resources if they decide they need them. It’s the manner in which they are introduced that makes all the difference in the world. When I offer organizational training and I am speaking with officers and call-takers about reactions to traumatic events, I am cautious not to propose that PTSD or other mental health issues are inevitable. Instead, I alert them to the idea that they could develop PTSD, depression, or burnout, given an abundance of risk factors combined with the absence of protective factors. There isn’t a magical formula as to which risk and protective factors evolve into PTSD. It is a highly complex and individual situation. Risk factors include lack of social support, history of traumatic events, the perception of threat to life during the incident, coping styles, and even genetic susceptibility. Aside of the absence of risk factors, some protective factors include the presence of social support, positive personalities, and an overall satisfaction with life. It’s the officers’ resilience, coupled with support, which will allow them to heal. It requires making the decision that you will take care of yourself and then doing it continuously.

The truth of the matter is that police are actually quite resilient. Statistically, police officers are on par with or, in some instances, slightly above the general population in terms of rates of mental health issues. Even when they have been found to be generously above the general population, it is still a minority of officers. The percentage of police officers afflicted by anxiety and depression is mixed and is oftentimes confounded by statistics for PTSD since those with PTSD seem to have a higher risk of developing depression. PTSD rates in active duty police officers vary from 7 to 19 percent (Carlier, Lamberts, & Gersons, 1997; McCaslin et al., 2006; Neylan et al., 2005). One study of first responders responding to the attack on the World Trade Center found that 8.8 percent of the first responders likely had depression, while 11.1 percent likely had PTSD, based on self-administered symptom questionnaires (Stellman et al., 2008). Although these statistics are higher than the general population statistics (6.7 percent of Americans have depression [Anxiety and Depression Association of America, 2016], while 7–8 percent have PTSD [U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, 2016]), it is important to note that at least 91 percent of first responders did NOT have depression nor did almost 89 percent have PTSD after their exposure to the terrorist attacks and the subsequent loss of lives, including the lives of their co-workers. Even if many of the first responders underreported their symptoms, there would still be a substantial number of them who remained healthy. Let’s look at a few reasons why police are such resilient people.

I think it’s fair to say that people who decide to go into a stressful, dangerous profession have a personality or at least the attitude of being tough. I have had many people say to me when I was a police officer: “I don’t know how you do it. I could never do that job.” They would go on to speak about being too afraid to chase bad guys or deal with conflicts on a daily basis. So those who choose this job already possess courage and determination to manage difficult situations. Burke (2009) studied the reasons why individuals entered policing and found four primary reasons: 1) a family history of policing, 2) attraction to the power of the position, 3) prior experience with police (sometimes as a crime victim), and 4) desire to help people. In short, they believe in their ability to exercise control over situations, right the wrongs, and be helpful to others. When the expectations are realistic, because they’re aware of the limitations of the police role, they will likely experience less stress. Their prior traumatizations, addressed with adaptive coping, may be a protective factor, in that they have developed and practiced coping with adversity. When they have an exaggerated view of their ability to control outcomes, they’re more likely to suffer and question their abilities, increasing their risk of traumatic stress. I’ll revisit the impact of prior traumatizations later in this chapter.

The second layer of “resilience screening” is the pre-screening background and psychological evaluation. This process weeds out many of those who are not suitable and able to be resilient on the job, including those whose assumptions about their ability to handle the job are misguided. Important indicators of coping, well-being, and interpersonal skills are assessed.

The next layer involves the training that police receive which promotes their coping and sense of self-efficacy. Training in stress management, crisis intervention, and work–life balance offers police the skills to manage the difficulties in their jobs. These courses are more recent additions to the police academy curriculum. So, many police did not have this during their initial training but, rather, as part of their continued education training. In fact, I have heard from officers that they did not absorb the stress management training during the academy because they were so gung ho to learn about more exciting topics like weapons, drugs, car chases, and takedowns. They revisited the training material later when it was needed for guidance on what to do and who to contact when stress levels were high or they were otherwise struggling. This leads me to the next piece of evidence supporting the resilience of police: they are action-oriented. If there is a problem, they want to “fix” it. This can also be problematic in that they may not seek or allow support from others in “fixing” difficulties, but I will discuss that in the last chapter.

I conducted three research studies with police officers, inquiring of how they cope with their exposure to secondary t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 Are Police Resilient?
• Chapter 2 Critical Police Incidents: Reactions and Recovery
• Chapter 3 Secondary Traumatic Stress: Uncomplicated Strategies for Complex Trauma
• Chapter 4 Non-Operational Stressors: Catching the Sneaky Resilience Thief
• Chapter 5 Building Resilience: Mental Armor for Police Employees
• Chapter 6 Help to be Resilient
• Suggested Resources
• Index