Mental Health, Resilience, and Early Career Retention of a Police Officer Cohort

• In Event: Mental Wellness in Policing

Abstract

Data shows that over two-thirds of police officers leave the profession in the first five years of their careers. The mental health and wellness of early career police officers is an important and understudied factor related to police officer attrition and/or retention. The present study reports findings from year one of a four-year National Institute of Justice project reporting on the mental health status, wellness, resilience, and perceptions of law enforcement from a cohort of roughly 1,000 South Carolina police officers. Baseline surveys were administered to all police recruits entering the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy, the training academy in which all sworn law enforcement officers in the state must complete basic training. We will present a descriptive mental health, wellness, and resilience profile of our cohort, followed by a series of regression analyses utilizing these factors to predict police turnover in their first year of law enforcement. We discuss the implications for early career law enforcement officers, police agencies, and future steps in the remaining three-years of the project.

Authors

• Hunter Boehme, University of South Carolina

• Irick T.J. Geary, University of South Carolina

• Gabrielle O'Keefe, RTI International

• Ian T. Adams, University of South Carolina

• Scott Mourtgos, University of South Carolina

• Sohee Jung, University of South Carolina