The treatment of psychological problems experienced by the children of police officers in Northern Ireland

Abstract

This paper will discuss the recent establishment of the Police Rehabilitation and Retraining Trust's Child and Adolescent Therapy Service. This service was set up in response to an expressed need within the police family to provide evidenced‐based psychological therapies for child and adolescent psychopathology caused either directly by service‐related incidents or indirectly via parental psychopathology. Officers receiving treatment within the Trust's Adult Psychological Therapies Service frequently expressed distress and guilt regarding the impact their service and related symptoms had on their children. In addition, officers reported a reluctance to utilise existing statutory child and adolescent mental health services. The impact of the constantly changing political landscape on this population will be examined as the general decrease of an overt terrorist threat allows an opportunity for police families to count the cost the ‘troubles’ have had on their mental health and to assess what support is required. But the uncertainty of what level of covert threat remains continues to impact directly on family life. This paper will examine the clinical approaches adopted by this specialist service, in particular Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing. It will examine how an ongoing and current threat of further trauma impacts on treatment provision and on the establishment of the therapeutic alliance. Primary and secondary stressors unique to this population will be explored, and their impact on treatment, along with how these trauma‐related problems might manifest themselves in a variety of disorders. While the Child and Adolescent Therapy Service exists specifically to provide treatment for police children, the service aims to establish links with statutory services in an attempt to ensure that police families will be able to utilise existing resources, gradually moving away from the feelings of community isolation expressed by some police families.