The Role of Moral Suffering (Moral Distress and Moral Injury) in Police Compassion Fatigue and PTSD: An Unexplored Topic

Frontiers in Psychology

Konstantinos Papazoglou¹ 

关键词: police trauma;    PTSD;    resilience;    moral distress;    moral injury;    compassion fatigue;    resilience promotion;    health promotion;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01999

学科分类：心理学（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

In the early spring of 2014, the first author was collecting data through a field research study that was conducted during a police special forces tactical training session. In one of the critical incident training scenarios (a hostage situation), the person playing the role of the violent criminal was lying on the ground pretending to be severely injured as a result of being shot by the officers. When the incident had been resolved and the hostages were safe, one of the police officers began to administer first aid care to both the criminal and the wounded hostages. When asked why he chose to treat the criminal as well as the victims, he responded that, “We are cops, we are not killers. We need to take care of everybody injured in the scene.” The author contends that such scenarios (e.g., the attempt to take care of a criminal who tried to kill you, your fellow officers, or civilians) generate moments of moral suffering. Moral suffering's prominent role toward traumatization has been highlighted by many trauma scholars (e.g., Litz et al., 2009) who suggest that current trauma research has not efficiently investigated the phenomenon of moral suffering in frontline professionals' exposure to traumatic incidents (Nash and Litz, 2013; Kopacz et al., 2016; Maguen and Litz, 2016). In addition, it is argued that current post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnostic criteria do not efficiently capture the phenomenon of moral suffering in frontline professionals' exposure to traumatic incidents (Nash and Litz, 2013).

【 授权许可】

CC BY