Abstract
No previous studies in Mexico have been found that jointly analyze physical and leisure activities as variables related to mental health in police officers. This paper presents research on burnout in Mexican Police officers. The question it answers is: is there any association of burnout with physical and leisure activities and personal profile? A total of 276 police officers (87% men and 13% women) participated. To obtain information, the Spanish Burnout Inventory and the Operational Police Stress questionnaires were used. A cross sectional study design was utilized with tests of validity and reliability, goodness of fit, analysis of variance (ANOVA), and analysis of k-means clusters. Results showed that a high number of policemen had high prevalence of burnout and a high level of mental exhaustion, and that exercise was positively and significantly related to lower burnout risk. Men showed higher risk than women. Results should be considered to improve interventions and occupational health practices in the police force. This paper improves understanding of burnout among policemen and the importance of exercise and leisure activities to alleviate burnout.
Highlights
Burnout has been a topic of interest for academics and professionals for the last five decades [1,2,3,4]A search in academic databases yielded more than 39,000 articles found on the topic
The questionnaire was applied to 276 preventive police officers in Baja California
By comparing the scores in this study with other research that used the same questionnaire, it is possible to notice that the studied sample presents on average lower levels of the prevalence of burnout, considering that, in the case of teachers in the Mexican context, the dimension of mental exhaustion is more frequent [69] and in the case of police officers in the Portuguese context, the dimension of work excitement shows less frequently [70]
Summary
Burnout has been a topic of interest for academics and professionals for the last five decades [1,2,3,4]A search in academic databases yielded more than 39,000 articles found on the topic. Burnout has been a topic of interest for academics and professionals for the last five decades [1,2,3,4]. Academics have defined burnout as a syndrome induced by the job; for example, Freudenberger (1974) first defined it as the observation among workers of disappointment and loss of desire that developed into burnout. Pines et al (1981) defined it as an emotional demand that physically, mentally and spiritually trespassed on worker limits. Maslach et al (2001) defined it as a prolonged response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stressors on the job. Schaufeli et al (2009) defined burnout as a mix of psychological, behavioral and physical symptoms. Other researcher discussed a negative phenomenon observed in workers caused by mismatch of intentions and reality at the job and inadequate coping strategies. The literature mentions up to 100 symptoms as an indicator of burnout [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20]
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