Summer 2023 - 15

POLICE PERFORMANCE UNDER STRESS
* Research findings demonstrated that stress
experienced by police officers may have a
negative effect on officers' performance while
on duty.
- For example, extreme stress arousal during
a critical incident can result in respiratory
changes (e.g., hyperventilation, or holding
one's breath) that impair the areas of the
brain that direct fine motor skills, sensory
perception, and visual and auditory acuity.
* Covey and colleagues (2013) found that
police officers with symptoms of stressrelated
anxiety were more likely to shoot
inappropriately in simulated critical incidents.
* If early resilience promotion intervention
occurs within police organizations, the
cumulative effect of police-related stress and
trauma may be prevented, at least to a large
degree (Papazoglou, 2013; Papazoglou &
Andersen, 2014).
MENTAL PREPAREDNESS TRAINING
AMONG THE POLICE
Mental preparedness refers to:
* Psycho-education about the psychological
and physiological aspects of extreme stress
and potential trauma.
* Practice-focused techniques allow officers
to apply these techniques in their critical
incident training and the real world, and
sufficient opportunities to practice the
resilience techniques in order that they
become automatic physical and mental
responses to the stress of real-life policing
(Andersen et al., 2015).
Mental preparedness is a vital component of
the following integral parts of police work:
* Decision-making
* Situational Awareness
* Efficient Energy Management
In order for mental preparedness training
to be effective, the following conditions
must be considered:
* Techniques need to be brief. They do not
usually have enough time to apply long-term
techniques.
* Techniques should first be learned in a nonstressful
environment.
* After the techniques are mastered, they
should be applied right before and right after
exposure to a critical incident.
* The application of mental preparedness
techniques must be applied within these time
intervals (e.g., right before and right after
exposure to an incident) in order to prepare
for a critical incident and recover from the
stress encountered during the incident.
To download the full study from the University
of Toronto researchers, Judith P. Andersen, Ph.D.;
Konstantinos Papazoglou, M.A.; Markku Nyman,
M.Sc.; Mari Koskelainen, D.Clin.Psych.; & Harri
Gustafsberg, M.Sc., follow the hyperlinked text. n
tacticaltrainingandconditioning.com | 15
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283053861_Fostering_Resilience_among_the_Police http://www.tacticaltrainingandconditioning.com
Summer 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Summer 2023
