Essay On Effects Of Stress On Police Officers

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The Effects of the Stresses Associated with being a Police Officer Within the criminal justice system police officers carry a significant role. The daily duties of a police officer include a variety of challenging tasks such as paper work, highway patrol, interviews, and emergency response. These officers typically work fulltime (often times days and nights) long hours, and overtime. Also, Police officers have a significant amount of responsibility to the community. They are expected to maintain law and order by preventing crime, protecting the community, and decrease the fear of crime. The difficult tasks, long hours and pressure police officers undergo make their jobs very stressful. The substantial amount of stress associated with being …show more content…
The high stress levels accompanying policing cause negative psychological states. According to Burke (1994), “Research attention has focused recently on psychological burnout among police officers. Maslach defined burnout as a syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, or feelings of low personal accomplishment.” These symptoms have a tremendous effect on their families. “Police officers reporting higher psychological burnout were more likely to display anger, spend time away from the family, be uninvolved in family matters, and to have unsatisfactory marriages (Burke 1994).” According to Blackmore (1987) 37 percent of police officers have serious marital problems. The frustrations, depression, withdraw, and anger felt by officers, transfers to their home life (Burke 1994). This can create problems with parenting and intimacy. If someone is withdrawn, they fail to communicate, which is vital to any successful relationship and necessary for raising a family. A research study that worked with the spouses of police officers concluded, “The higher an officer 's score on the emotional exhaustion scale, the more likely his wife was to report that he comes home feeling physically exhausted, tense, and upset (Maslach 1979).” The exhaustion caused by the demands of police work negatively affects …show more content…
The excessive amounts of stress police officers undergo on a daily basis increase their risks to depression and suicide. According to Territo and Vetter, “One study concluded that available data indicate male police officers to be more likely to kill themselves than men in other occupations.” An experiment that studied occupational based factors their relationship with suicide concluded, “The combined impact of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and increased alcohol use led to a ten-fold increase risk for suicide ideation (Violanti 2011).” Suicide in families can be detrimental. Not only is the loss of a spouse emotionally unbearable, but also extremely stressful. Most likely, the police officer is the main or only source of income. When an officer commits suicide the family is left behind to handle all finances. This places a tremendous amount of stress on the spouse who is now the sole caregiver for the family. The children are left in a single-parent home, forced to grieve with the fact that their parent chose to kill themselves. In result, the offspring might blame themselves, fall behind in school, or even resort to negative coping strategies

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