Abstract
Public Safety Personnel (PSP; e.g., correctional workers and officers, firefighters, paramedics, police officers, and public safety communications officials (e.g., call center operators/dispatchers)) are regularly exposed to potentially psychologically traumatic events (PPTEs). PSP also experience other occupational stressors, including organizational (e.g., staff shortages, inconsistent leadership styles) and operational elements (e.g., shift work, public scrutiny). The current research quantified occupational stressors across PSP categories and assessed for relationships with PPTEs and mental health disorders (e.g., anxiety, depression). The participants were 4820 PSP (31.7% women) responding to established self-report measures for PPTEs, occupational stressors, and mental disorder symptoms. PPTEs and occupational stressors were associated with mental health disorder symptoms (ps < 0.001). PSP reported substantial difficulties with occupational stressors associated with mental health disorder symptoms, even after accounting for diverse PPTE exposures. PPTEs may be inevitable for PSP and are related to mental health; however, leadership style, organizational engagement, stigma, sleep, and social environment are modifiable variables that appear significantly related to mental health.
Highlights
Public safety personnel (PSP; e.g., correctional workers and officers, firefighters, paramedics, police officers, and public safety communications officials)form a diverse set of vocations focused on protecting our populations from threat and harm [1]
A total of n = 8520 PSP responded to the first question of the survey (i.e., “Please indicate which category of First Responders or other Public Safety Personnel you feel best describes your current occupation”), but only n = 4820 PSP provided enough information to be definitively placed into one of the six PSP categories of interest in our study (i.e., correctional workers and officers, federal police (i.e., Royal Canadian Mounted Police; (RCMP)), firefighters, paramedics, municipal/provincial police, public safety communications officials) and proceeded far enough in the survey to complete the occupational stressors and mental disorder sections (56.6% of the total sample)
The same organizational stressors tended to be endorsed as having the highest mean level of stress; there were some significant differences between specific PSP categories
Summary
Public safety personnel (PSP; e.g., correctional workers and officers, firefighters, paramedics, police officers, and public safety communications officials (e.g., call center operators/dispatchers))form a diverse set of vocations focused on protecting our populations from threat and harm [1]. As a function of their occupations, PSP are frequently exposed to a wide variety of workplace stressors. Most research examining these occupational concerns has focused on the exposure to potentially psychologically traumatic events (PPTEs; e.g., threatened or actual physical assaults, sexual violence, fires, and explosions; [1,2,3]). Research has demonstrated that PPTE exposure is associated with an increased risk of negative mental health outcomes, such as symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD; [2]), major depressive disorder (MDD; [6]) panic disorder (PD; [7]), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD; [8]), social anxiety disorder (SAD; [9]), and alcohol use disorder (AUD; [10]). Results from a recent survey with a large Canadian PSP sample indicated that the lifetime average number of different PPTE types experienced was 11.08 out of 16 different assessed
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