The Mental Health and Service Use of Texas Law Enforcement Officers
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The Mental Health and Service Use of Texas Law Enforcement Officers Grace M. Boland1 · Temilola Salami1 Accepted: 16 November 2020 © Society for Police and Criminal Psychology 2020
Abstract As law enforcement officers are regularly exposed to unique stressors during the course of their occupation, they are at elevated risk of developing mental health problems. Indeed, previous literature has identified that law enforcement officers endorse higher rates of mental health problems than the general population. Despite this, many officers do not seek mental health treatment. Lack of service utilization is particularly concerning as mental health problems have been associated with deficits in job performance. The current study aimed to identify rates of mental health problems with the Texas law enforcement community, as well as rates of treatment seeking for job-related incidents. This study identified that mental health problems are common among officers in Texas, with the three most frequently endorsed conditions being: sleep disturbances (45.00%), depression (32.90%), and PTSD (12.90%). Further, only 1.40% of officers were currently in mental health treatment and 17.90% had previously sought out mental health related treatment. These findings, their implications, and future directions are discussed. Keywords Law enforcement · Mental health · Treatment seeking · Texas
The Mental Health and Service Use of Texas Law Enforcement Officers Law enforcement officers experience high rates of stress due to the unique demands of their occupation, including exposure to critical incidents (Weiss et al. 2010), unique dangers (Bierie 2017), distinct social stressors from peers and the general public (Adams and Buck 2010), monotony, and scrutiny by the community and media (El Sayed et al. 2019). This chronic exposure to stress has been associated with numerous detrimental mental health outcomes including deficits in cognitive abilities (Gutshall et al. 2017), burnout (Kula 2016), psychological distress, and emotional exhaustion (Adams and Buck 2010). When compared with community samples, law enforcement officers have higher prevalence rates of mental health problems (Fox et al. 2012; Violanti et al. 2017), suggesting that this is an at-risk population for mental health-related difficulties due to the stressors endemic within the law enforcement occupation. Indeed, prior research indicates officers * Grace M. Boland [email protected] 1
Department of Psychology & Philosophy, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX, USA
are vulnerable to depression (Gershon et al. 2009), anxiety (Violanti et al. 2014), alcohol use (Ménard and Arter 2014), posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD; Komarovskaya et al. 2011; Soomra and Yanos 2019), and sleep disturbances (Christopher et al. 2016). These serious mental health consequences have been associated with occupational ineffectiveness (Fox et al. 2012; Shane 2010). In particular, increased work stress has been associated with aggression and interpersonal conflict within law enforcement (Ge
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