Summer 2023 - 14

POLICE
Fostering On-Duty Resilience
By Wesley Sykes, Managing Editor
P
olice officers are often mandated to respond
to extremely stressful and potentially
traumatic situations over the course of their
careers. Research has shown that occupational
stress and trauma exposure has a negative
impact on police officers' health and wellness.
Police officers are expected to respond to
critical incidents and resolve challenging
situations effectively despite routine exposure
to severe stress. Even though local and national
governments invest a vast amount of money in
police tactical training and equipment, resilience
building has not been a major component of
police training.
Exposure to highly stressful incidents and
potentially traumatic situations can, over time,
negatively impact an individual's cognitive
abilities, memory, mental and physical health,
14 | Tactical Training & Conditioning | Summer 2023
and overall well-being (Sapolsky, 2004).
Research with military personnel has shown
that U.S. veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan
wars, diagnosed with post-traumatic stress
disorder (PTSD) had a significantly higher
risk of developing cardiovascular diseases,
musculoskeletal problems, and even cancer,
compared to their peers who had not been
diagnosed with PTSD (Andersen et al., 2010).
Pioneering findings by researchers from
the University of Toronto were published in
a 2015 study, entitled 'Fostering Resilience
Among the Police', which appeared in The
Journal of Law Enforcement and uses onduty
resilience research from the military to
compare to police forces.
Below is a synopsis of the findings from that
2015 study.
Summer 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Summer 2023
