Suicide Rate for Police Officers as Compred to the General Public -Hw Response
Submitted by: Submitted by kusa
Views: 273
Words: 349
Pages: 2
Category: Other Topics
Date Submitted: 10/21/2012 06:54 PM
As of the year 2012, suicide rates for police officers is at ~ 17 officers out of every 100,000. This is compared to a rate of 11 of the general public out of 100,000. This being down from 141 out of every 100,000 police officers as recorded in 2008.Furthermore it is known that officers at age 40-44 were at the highest risk for suicide accounting for 27% of reported suicides, compared to the 17% suicide rate composed of officers serving for less than 10 years.
A major currently understood factor to this these suicides is understood to be PTSD (this being due to the changes in brain chemistry etc, that lead to a predisposition to depression etc: http://www.policesuicideprevention.com/id62.html).Other factors include family traumas, financial hardship , personal/family problems, financial hardship, psychologically adverse incidents, firearms availability.
In my opinion, the research that is needed includes research into the identification of at risk officers, research into developing methods to better help officers better cope with stressors that increase the risk of suicide, and methods to debrief officers so that stress related to their job may be released.
Finally, I also believe that research should be dedicated to developing methods of coping for the families of officers who are also affected by situations that police officers must deal with. This being because a lot of the research indicated has mentioned and focused on “on the job” and the overtly social aspects of police officers, with vague descriptions of how household interactions also can contribute to stress and PTSD. This being with the assumption that the situation at home (infighting, lack of sleep, private habits... excessive drinking etc) could also contribute to greater stress on the officer.
I would conduct the following research by compiling a survey similar in nature to the NSOPS study. That is using the blogs, emails, questionnaires, etc in order to understand or gain a glimpse...
