Starting with Two Strikes? Police Recruits, Social Support and Psychological Health

• In Event: Mental Wellness in Policing

Abstract

Law enforcement is notorious for being a hard job: for example, police officers face significant risks of being involved in or witnessing violence, and retirees have shorter life expectancy. While this is fairly well-known, psychological health has been the focus of an increasing number of studies in the past few decades. There is now a large agreement that police organizations should care about the well-being of their workers, including officers, in order to be able to fulfill their mission. How to achieve this care has been central to the current concern: what works? With whom? And so on… What is less known is the evolution of mental health, especially the “baseline” of police recruits. Where do they start? This presentation is based on a large study conducted in the province of Quebec (Canada). About a thousand participants completed two questionnaires about social support and work-related psychological health, alongside questions about demographics, motivations, self-control, and so on. The intention behind this analysis is to provide an empirical foundation to an “early-intervention”-type program that aims to identify recruits with different needs before they even begin working in law enforcement.

Authors

• Remi Boivin, Université de Montréal

• Andree-Ann Deschenes, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières

• Annie Gendron, Ecole nationale de police du Quebec