Non-fatal Injury on Duty and Associations with Mental Health, Maladaptive Coping, and Sleep Disturbance among Police Officers.

police stress and injury;Public Health;Health Sciences;Epidemiological Science

West, Christine AnnePark, Sung Kyun ;

University of Michigan

关键词: police stress and injury;    Public Health;    Health Sciences;    Epidemiological Science;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/110411/cawes_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

Background: Police work involves exposure to multiple critical incident stressors including the risk of being seriously injured or killed. The objective of the research was to examine the prevalence, frequency, duration, and recency of injury leave and the association of injury with perceived stress, mental health, substance use, and sleep quality in U.S. police officers. Methods: The sample population for this study included all 430 active duty police officers from a mid-sized urban police department enrolled in a cohort study between 2004 and 2009. Self-reported measures of mental health and behavioral outcomes and injury leave data were available from work history data. Bivariate and multivariate regression analyses were conducted comparing mental health, behavioral, and sleep outcomes in officers with and without injury and by increasing number, length and recency of injury. Results: Nearly two-thirds of the participants had experienced an injury. Among those injured, 67 percent experienced more than one duty-related injury with an average of 3 injuries (range 1-12). The median number of days on leave due to a duty-related injury was 86 (range of 1-2250) with 41% having had more than 90 days leave. Although trending in the hypothesized direction, mean perceived stress, depression, PTSD, anxiety scores, smoking, and alcohol use were not statistically significantly associated with injury occurrence or length of injury. Mean perceived stress, PTSD, anxiety, and cigarettes smoked increased with increasing number of injuries. Poor sleep quality mediated the effect of injury on adverse psychological outcomes after controlling for age, sex, and rank.Poor sleep quality was significantly associated with having had an injury, number of injuries, and length of injury after adjustment. Conclusion: Findings suggest work-related injury is common and repeated work-related injuries are psychologically distressing and associated with poor sleep quality in U.S. police officers. Targeted and timely clinical and workplace interventions to prevent injuries, improve sleep quality, and psychological symptom development are needed. Future longitudinal studies should examine these outcomes with more injury-specific information, with other first responder groups, and in nationally representative datasets.