SOCY 302 - Policing in Canada (Part 2)
Jeremiah
Terms in this set (121)
-Stress is a state of strain / tension caused by undesirable or demanding circumstances
-Police work entails some unique stressors that are non-existent or less prevalent in
The Concept of Stress many other occupations
-Stress comes in a number of different forms
-Happens when they have to adapt to an uncomfortable situation
Eustress
-Positive Ex. Physical exertion before a competition Ex. Mental exertion - escape room
Types of Stress is fun but still have stress to get out
Distress
-Negative Exposure to abuse Physical trauma More of this type in policing
Acute
-Immediate
-Exposure to sudden stressor
-Emergency situation May require large amount of physical and psychological
adaptation Temporary -Ex. Encountering a person with a weapon
Types of Distress
Chronic
-Gradual stress that happens day to day on the job
-Long term, they build up
-Constant exposure to public scrutiny
-Constantly exposure to negative situations (acute can turn chronic)
Physiological
-Biological effects on individual Ex.Increase blood pressure,
Psychological
Effects of distress
-More difficult to evaluate
-Emotional effects
-Anxiety, panic attacks, poor cognitive functioning, irritability
Danger is a key stressor
Danger and Police Work
Danger is a concept useful to understanding stress in police work
Perceived danger
-Relates to individual belief of danger in police work
-Influences by media coverage, fictional portrayals, actual experiences that danger is
present
Potential danger
-Focus on probability
Understandings of Danger -Some situations have a higher probability of being dangerous
-Suspect behavior that happens to heighten concern (threats or resistance)
Actual danger
-Actual reported statistics
-Actual injuries or deaths
-Accidents or intentional
-More extreme experience of stress
All of these forms of danger are helpful in better understanding the concept of danger
How do these understandings of danger in the context of policing
differ Actual danger easier to measure/study than perceived and potential danger
All are impactful
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Despite recent increases in 2023 of on duty officer deaths, these increases are still
relatively low compared to previous decades. Pandemic, access to more guns and
Is actual danger increasing in Canada ? mental health crisis has made there be more danger for police The dangers are
changing not getting more dangerous
-officers in USA face more danger
-Factors that contribute to the production of stress are called "stressors"
-Officers are less likely to repost themselves due to consequences by individual,
Police Stressors
supervisors and public
-Police may be decentralized due to them always encountering stress on job
Police work itself
- Work overload Shift work - weird long hours Exposure to life threatening violent
situations Frustrations by trying to solve a problem
The police organization
- They must ensure the are following organizational policies and procedures Happens
when there is a lack of support
The criminal justice system
Loo (2005) 5 categories of police stressors Make court appearances which cuts into their personal time and challenges them
Slowness of criminal justice system Perceptions of injustice
The public or community
Stress can accumulate when they feel like they cant trust public and that public doesn’t
support them (cynisism)
Personal life and family
Impacts involvement at home and to be with family Impacts sleeping and eating
patterns Distributive to family life
-Police work is differentiated from many other occupations by the perpetual potential
for crisis situations
-May encourage a state of hypervigilance Produced by the notion that being off guard
Line of duty and crisis situations will enhance danger
- An enhanced state of sensitivity accompanied by an exaggerated intensity of
response behaviour
-They always have to be ready but also could have Mundane tasks
monitored officer heart rates when they were on and off duty to objectively determine
the situations that officers found the most stressful What did they find?
They found that officer elevated heart rate started to rise before they started shift In
Anderson et al (2002) findings.. uniform they had a much higher heartrate
This is anticipated stress
They have stress on the job even when not in a situation and is related to
hypervigilance
Burnout is a mental experience composed of...
Emotional exhaustion
Sensations of physical overexertion and mental fatigue steming from continuous
interactions Depersonalization
Burnout and Mental Health
Development of negative attitudes about public
Low perceptions of personal achievement
Reduced personal accomplishment, feeling of unhappiness with themselves
-Burnout is an outcome of exposure to stress
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systematic review concludes that burnout is not meaningfully patterned around socio-
demographic characteristics (specifically age, gender, number of
children)
Aguayo, Vargas, Cañadas and De la Fuente's
Younger attitudes had more negative feelings than older ones
(2017) findings
Female officers had more emotional burnout
Effect size of these results were small which meant the relationship isn't strong and less
significant Sex and age aren't factors related to burn out
systematic review finds that police report high rates of mental health problems...
14.6% for depression
14.2% for post-traumatic stress disorder
Syed, Ashwick, Schlosser, Jones, Rowe and
9.6% for a generalised anxiety disorder
Billings' (2020) findings
8.5% for suicidal ideation
5.0% for alcohol dependence
25.7% for hazardous drinking
-Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can occur as a result of isolated and substantial
exposure to stress as well as prolonged exposure to less substantial stress
Officer stress and PSTD
-Form of emotional trauma
-The reactions to stress can be emotional or physical or cognitive or behavioral
The stress that officers are exposed to has been associated with a number of serious
consequences, including... Suicide Mental health problems Substance abuse Alcohol
consumption Marital and family problems
Extreme Consequences of Stress
(Access to firearms, exposure to human misery, social strain, marital difficulties)
Suicide prevention training
Mental health recourses
study of operational stress for first responders suggests they are much more likely to
develop a mental disorder than the general population Of 5,813 participants, 44.5%
Carleton et al (2018) findings "screened positive for clinically significant symptom clusters consistent with one or
more mental disorders" Statistics Canada has reported that the rate for the general
population is 10%
YRPS Wellness Center York Regional Police launch Canada's first police-run mental health center
Addressing stressors in policing that lead to serious consequences can be done in a
number of ways... Critical incident debriefing Officers are asked to debrief and assess
their feelings after an incident Sensitization training
Preemptive exposure to feelings that are common to officers What feelings are normal
They can tell their real feelings even though there they feel like they need to be macho
Responding to Stress in Policing
This is rare
Peer-counselling program Advocates for training officers so peers can recognize
problems with officers
Counselling services for family members
Assists personal effective by allowing family members to join in on conversation
Stressor-outcome model
- stressful circumstance directly leads to a negative outcome (stress= negative
outcome)
Strain perspective Example =
Explanatory Models of Occupational Stress *
Social-supports model
– individual will experience more or less stress depending on whether they have a
social support network in place Social support is a moderator between stress and the
outcome
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