Teresa Silva
I'm a PhD in Psychology and occupy a position as Associate Professor in criminology at Mid Sweden University.
During the past 20 years, I have been researching mental health topics in different populations such as persons with drug addiction problems, adolescent offenders, maltreated children, victims of intimate partner violence, and in the current project, police officers. Police officers, like other frontline workers, had to deal with the harshness of the pandemic in the context of their professional activity but they had also to enforce management strategies in many cases not well received by the population. How has this affected their mental health? That is the focus of my current work.
Sessions
Among different professional groups, law enforcement has been identified as one of the most hazardous and stressful occupations due to the complexity of roles and responsibilities that entails. Besides the usual job-related stressors, the pandemic has added professional and personal strain components that might severely harm officers’ mental health.
This study had a twofold objective. First, we measured the levels of Burnout, symptoms of posttraumatic stress, and general psychological distress on a sample of Portuguese officers (n = 1597) that volunteer for the study. Second, we examined the effect of the COVID-19 disease and perceived exposure to the coronavirus on their mental health.
The National Directorate of the Policia de Segurança Pública approve the study and spread the information and the link to the questionnaire among their officers. In total, 1639 respondents answered the questionnaire; 42 had not been in active service since January of 2020 and were removed from the analyses. As expected, disengagement levels, exhaustion, and psychological distress were higher than similar professional populations in non-pandemic conditions. Interestingly, those officers with more than ten years of active work reported higher levels of Burnout but at the same time, they showed to have fewer symptoms of posttraumatic stress compared to officers that were younger in the profession. Officers who were married or living in a partner relationship and had school-age children revealed lower levels of stress, in general, compared to officers who reported a different social living situation. Slight gender differences were found for disengagement only where women revealed higher scores.
In conclusion, as expected, the pandemic is having an impact on the mental health of police officers, but it is not a homogeneous effect that should be taken into account for any type of mental health intervention in this professional group.