Law Enforcement Officers and the Trauma Research Paper

Introduction

Depression, suicidal feelings, and alcoholism are symptoms of trauma that people manifest after enduring traumatic experiences in life. Depression is the dominant symptom of trauma that causes people to develop suicidal feelings and become alcoholic.

National Institute of Mental Health explains that, “when a person has a depressive disorder, it interferes with daily life, normal functioning, and causes pain for both the person with the disorder and those who care about him or her” (2010, p.1).

Depression interferes with the normal life of a person as it results into lose of interest in activities, pessimism, fatigue, insomnia, irritability, persistent aches, and feelings of hopelessness amongst other symptoms.

When trauma is overwhelming, traumatized individuals resort to suicide and alcoholism to alleviate their psychological suffering due to traumatic experiences. Although there are many attributes of depression, traumatic experiences are the major causes of the depression in most people.

For instance, law enforcement officers experience traumatic incidences in the course of their duties such as frequent shootings, deaths, intimidation from the media and public, risking their lives, dangerous working environment, and humiliating domestic violence amongst many other stressors. Since traumatic experiences are common in the police profession, does the trauma that law enforcement officers endure over the years make them susceptible to depression, suicide and alcoholism?

Background Study

The traumatic experiences that the police officers encounter and endure during the course of their duties make them susceptible to depression, suicide, and alcoholism. Depression is a psychological disorder that occurs mainly due to the traumatic experiences of life.

Law enforcement community frequently encounters traumatic experiences that have contributed to high incidences of depression among the police officers signifying that trauma is the cause of depression. Prevalence study carried out in Taiwan showed that about 21% of the law enforcement officers experience trauma.

The study further revealed that the prevalence rates of depression are higher in men as compared to women because men have more responsibilities in terms of marriage and policing duties. However, the trauma and stressors that are inherent in the police profession contribute significantly to the police officers’ depression.

Leeds argue that, “police officers experience frequent and ongoing stressors in their work that range from cumulative stress – constant risk on the job, conflicting regulations, and public perceptions that may be inaccurate – to critical incidents: violent crimes, shootings and mass disasters” (2009, p.4). All these stressors and traumatic experiences are potential causes of depression that have made police officers become susceptible to depressive trauma.

The police profession is emotionally stressing and physically dangerous thus eliciting suicidal feelings that expose police officers to suicide. Anderson argues that, “police have been tuned to dissociate from their emotions or suppress their emotions in order to be able to endure the scene, but chronic, long-term and cumulative stress takes its toll on police officers resulting into trauma syndrome” (1998, p.12).

The traumatic syndrome consists of suicidal feelings that at some instances overwhelm the police officers making them commit suicide. The police officers endure traumatic experiences up to a point in life where they trigger devastating suicidal feelings that cause depression.

Although the police officers may tolerate many traumatic incidences such as witnessing the death of fellow police officer or ordeal of criminals, after a certain period such memories resurface to elicit suicidal moods. This trend illustrates that traumatic experiences associated with policing cumulatively increase the susceptibility of the police officers to suicide.

Retirement studies of the police officers have shown that many of them suffer from alcoholism caused by the traumatic memories related to the cumulative experiences, which occur throughout the police life.

Violanti argues that, “law enforcement officers experience varying forms of job-incurred trauma throughout their careers; residual effects can eventually create trauma during retirement as officers may develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder from carrying accumulated emotional baggage into their retirement years” (1997, p.5).

Since working or retired police officers experience post-traumatic stress disorder, they turn to alcohol to relieve their trauma by they eventually become alcoholics. Thus, alcoholism is a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder that the police officers commonly suffer from when they retire.

Studies have shown that traumatic experiences of policing have psychological residual effects that lead to depression, suicide and alcoholism, hence experts recommend police officers to undergo psychological counseling and training before and after retiring in order to alleviate cumulative trauma.

Ethical Considerations in the Research Paper

Since trauma is a psychological condition that affects people in their private lives, research considers several ethical considerations that may affect quality of the research and infringe into the rights of the participants.

To collect relevant data in terms of questionnaires, researchers should ethically consider that participants need informed consent concerning the study and assurance that information obtained from them is confidential.

Lewis advises researchers that they should have in mind “the need to communicate clearly and sincerely the nature and reasons for your research, whom it may benefit and how, and what costs or risks are involved for informants” (2008, p.4).

If the selected participants have any reservation concerning the importance of research and the need of their private information such as depression, suicidal feelings, and alcoholism, they will withhold vital information making the research to come up with incredible and biased findings that do not reflect the real status of trauma among police officers. Thus, seeking informed consent and giving confidentiality assurance of the information is a paramount ethical consideration in the research.

Harm consideration is another ethical issue of the research. Since the subjects of the research have endured traumatic experiences, too much probing and inquisition may act as a reminder of the traumatic experiences, hence worsening their trauma.

Ivanoff cautions that there is “need to avoid, or at least take steps to minimize, unnecessary harm, risk or wrong to the group of people you are studying or are working with, as well as causing embarrassment to them” (2002, p.12). Hence, researchers need to minimize probing questions in their questionnaires in consideration of the harm posed by too much inquisition.

Measurements

The objective of the research proposal is to establish whether the traumatic experiences that law enforcement officers encounter and endure over course of their profession make them susceptible to depression, suicide, and alcoholism.

To establish the relationship between depression, suicide, and alcoholism relative to traumatic experiences of the law enforcement officers, the study will focus on three groups of police officers; trainees, serving and retired as independent variables and examine psychological variables such as frustration, deprivation, alcoholism and depression as dependent variables.

The hypothesis of the study is; traumatic experiences that police officers encounter during the course of their profession are responsible for high prevalence rates of depression, suicide, and alcoholism.

Depression, suicidal feelings, and alcoholism are three dependent variables that need correlation with the traumatic experience of the police officers in their profession. Since police officers encounter traumatic experiences during the course of their duties, the research assumes that police officer’s experience in their job correlate with the traumatic experiences.

Based on the assumption, the three independent variables, trainee, serving and retired police officers reflect the extent of traumatic experiences that each group has. Thus, the objective of the research is to determine whether there is any significant correlation between traumatic experiences and each of the dependent variables, depression, suicidal feelings, and alcoholism.

Data Collection Methods

The design of the methodology provides three groups of participants: trainee, serving, and retired police officers as independent variables. The objective of using three groups of participants is to find out the relationship between professional experience and the level of depression, suicidal feelings, and alcoholism in police officers.

According to Kohli and Bajpai, the level of depression, suicidal feelings and alcoholism among police officers is proportional to their professional experiences (2006, p.8). Therefore, to prove the effect of professional experience on depression, suicidal feelings and alcoholism levels, it is imperative to measure psychological variables of depression, frustration, alcoholism, and deprivation in trainee, serving and retired police officers.

The study requires random selection of 150 participants from a population of law enforcement officers in certain district or town. Since there are three groups, trainee, serving and retired police officers, each group should have 50 participants.

The trainee police officers will serve as a control group in determining the nature and extent of depression among serving and retired police officers. The selection of serving officers should be based on the ones that have a minimum experience of 10 years in their profession while the retired police officers should be the ones who have not exceeded five years after retiring.

In order to measure psychological variables, depression scale, frustration scale, and deprivation scale are essential in determining the levels of depression, frustration, and deprivation respectively. Rate and amount of alcohol consumption measures the extent of alcoholism that police officers have developed due to trauma.

Prior to the collection of data, the participants need to be in sober mood to enable them give the required information in the questionnaires.

Analysis

The findings of the research require correlation test to establish whether there is any significant correlation between traumatic experiences of the police officers and development of depression, suicidal feelings, and alcoholism.

In order to establish whether traumatic experiences correlate with development of depression, the study should correlate the extent of depression in the trainee, serving and retired police officers. Deprivation and frustration scale depicts the degree of suicidal feelings and then correlated with the traumatic experiences of trainee, serving and retired officers.

Similarly, the rate and amount of alcohol consumption by the police officers portrays the extent of alcoholism. Hence, the research establishes if alcoholism correlates with the traumatic experiences in the three groups of police officers.

If correlation the analysis establishes that there is a positive correlation between traumatic experiences of the police officers and each of the variables, depression, suicidal feelings and alcoholism, then the research study will accept the hypothesis.

Hence, research hypothesis stating that the traumatic experiences that law enforcement officers endure over the years make them susceptible to depression, suicide, and alcoholism becomes true.

If the research ascertains that there is negative correlation or no correlation, between traumatic experiences and each of the variables, depression, suicidal feelings and alcoholism, then the hypothesis become false.

Correlation coefficient that is greater than zero is positive while correlation coefficient of zero or less is negative. Therefore, for the hypothesis to be credible, the correlation coefficient needs to be close to one in order to depict strong positive relationship and causal effect.

References

Anderson, B. (1998). Trauma Response Profile. American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress, 8, 1-15.

Ivanoff, P. (2002): Police Suicide Study Recommends Additional Training Counseling. Columbia University Review, 20 (2), 1-19

Kohli, K., & Bajpai, G. (2006). A Comparative Study of Frustration, Depression and Deprivation among Trainee and Serving Police Officials. Indian Journal of Criminology and Criminalistics, 27(3), 1-16.

Leeds, A. (2009). Police Officers’ Responses to Chronic Stress, Critical Incidents and Trauma. Law Enforcement Bulletin, 12, 1-8.

Lewis, T. (2008). Ethical Issues in Qualitative Research. Journal of Scientific Research, 1-9.

National Institute of Mental Health, (2010). Depression. United States Department of Health Services, 1-23.

Violanti, M. (1997). Residuals of Police Occupational Trauma. The Australasian Journal Of Disaster and Trauma Studies, 3(2), 1-8.