Trauma In Law Enforcement
This paper first describes the types of critical incidents and other stresses experienced by law enforcement personnel. Many of these challenges affect all personnel who work in public safety and the helping professions, including police officers, firefighters, paramedics, dispatchers, trauma doctors, emergency room nurses, and psychotherapists (Miller, 1995, 1997, 1998a, 1998b, 1999, in press); however, the focus here will be on the stressors most relevant to police officers, criminal investigators, and other law enforcement personnel. Secondly, this article will describe the critical interventions and psychotherapeutic strategies that have been found most practical and useful for helping cops in distress. One of the worst effects of stress
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Debilitation from this daily stress accumulates making officers more vulnerable to traumatic incidents and normal pressures of life. The weakening process is often too slow to see; neither a person nor his friends are aware of the damage being done.
Programs for acute stress are important but are limited in their value for two reasons. First, they are a reaction to trauma that has occurred; an officer is already suffering. Important support can be given to the officer, but almost nothing can be done to prevent an incident that causes trauma. How does a police official stop an officer's partner from being killed next to him? Second, few officers are involved in traumatic incidents in a year compared with the whole department which meets stress in call after call.
If chronic stressors are identified, then police officials can take proactive steps. They can do something before an officer becomes another suicide statistic. Departments should stop making artificial distinctions between job-related and personal problems. The two are interwoven and contribute to each other. The end result is a group of people under the greatest stress in any job in
Debilitation from this daily stress accumulates making officers more vulnerable to traumatic incidents and normal pressures of life. The weakening process is often too slow to see; neither a person nor his friends are aware of the damage being done.
Programs for acute stress are important but are limited in their value for two reasons. First, they are a reaction to trauma that has occurred; an officer is already suffering. Important support can be given to the officer, but almost nothing can be done to prevent an incident that causes trauma. How does a police official stop an officer's partner from being killed next to him? Second, few officers are involved in traumatic incidents in a year compared with the whole department which meets stress in call after call.
If chronic stressors are identified, then police officials can take proactive steps. They can do something before an officer becomes another suicide statistic. Departments should stop making artificial distinctions between job-related and personal problems. The two are interwoven and contribute to each other. The end result is a group of people under the greatest stress in any job in