Police Mentality: A Look at the Mental Health Risks Within Law Enforcement
Approximately 800,000 law enforcement officers have careers surrounded by trauma, stress, substance abuse, and mental health disorders; and taxpayers give them guns.
“Every day you expect the worst. You think am I going to die, that’s what they teach you.”
Said former Bedford County Police Officer Alexandru “Alex” Barker, recalling his four years of service in the department. Even within a relatively short career as a police officer, Barker was keenly aware of the mental burden and stress the job could cause.
“You see the dark side of people a lot. We as cops protect the 99 percent from the one percent. 99 percent of people are good, but that one percent is all we deal with.” Barker explains.
Police officers are often the first to respond to an emergency call, placing them in dangerous, stressful, demanding, and traumatic situations. Persistent exposure to traumatic and stressful situations can take a toll on both the physical and emotional state of an individual.
“You deal with everything from child abuse to murder, all we see is that. So it’s a very negative one percent.” Barker continued.
According to the Addiction Center, police officers witness an average of 188 “critical incidents” during their careers. The constant exposure to these incidents can lead to mental health issues that are often overlooked or untreated. This has led to staggeringly underreported mental health statistics among police officers and first responders as a whole.
The Addiction Center estimates that around 30 percent of first responders develop behavioral health conditions during their time of service. Behavioral conditions include depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The PTSD and depression rates among United States police officers alone are five times higher than the rest of the population.
The stress among police officers has increased significantly due to heightened cultural tensions between the public and police. A Pew Research Center survey of 8,000 active duty officers found that 93 percent of officers are more concerned for their safety due to recent events.
Hypervigilance.
“You’re always waiting for someone to pull out a gun. You always expect the worst, right?” Barker remarks.
Much of the mental health complications that can arise as a police officer stem from the brain's neurochemical responses to danger. The brain’s “fight or flight” response is a series of chemical messages sent from different parts of the brain and nervous system to signal to the body that a threat or danger is present and that action is necessary.
When an officer responds to an emergency, their brain’s energy is concentrated on a threat while the nervous system delivers adrenaline and cortisol (the stress hormone) to keep the body prepared and active.
Ideally, the brain should only encounter minimal bursts of these neurochemical responses then return to a state of “rest and digest”. However, a law enforcement officer’s shift may be full of these neurochemical bursts of adrenaline and cortisol.
The brain is not intended to sustain this stress on a daily basis and the perpetual production of cortisol can lead to damage in the brain. Excessive cortisol can cause a person to be continuously on edge and their perception can become skewed. The brain is focused on potential threats and energy redirected from the frontal lobe where differentiation and reasoning happens.
This mental response is also referred to as hypervigilance. Hypervigilance is usually characterized by a heightened sense of awareness and environmental sensitivity. This heightened awareness can cause an individual to act or feel as though there is always a danger or threat present. It is most commonly seen among active-duty military or veterans.
Liberty University Police Officer Eugene “Gene” Brown is familiar with this phenomenon.
“Even when I’m off duty sitting in a restaurant, I’ll find myself looking at the doors to see who’s coming in. I’ll drive around a store or restaurant before I go in just to make sure nothing crazy is going on. You just kind of get used to that mentality.” Officer Brown details.
Hypervigilance usually occurs as a result of an underlying mental health condition such as anxiety, unresolved trauma, or PTSD. This can be particularly difficult for law enforcement because that mental state can persist even when they are off duty.
“When you’re off duty, you’re still a police officer. You raised your right hand and swore by the constitution in whatever state you’re a police officer that you’re on the clock 24/7. If anything happens in front of you, you’re going to take police action.” Explains New York Police Officer Frank Voce.
This sentiment was echoed by Alex Barker.
“I was always thinking I was a cop, I had my gun and my badge on me the entire time. if something happened, I knew I had to step in, that’s what you’re taught.” Says Barker.
This feeling of hyper-awareness can leave many officers feeling trapped; like they never get a break.
”When you’re a cop you’re told not to shut it off, you’re a cop 24/7. So even when I was off I hated leaving the house, because I was a cop going to the grocery store.” Barker continues.
Hypervigilance can lead to both mental and physical exhaustion because the brain is operating in “life or death” mode.
“I literally didn’t leave my house, when I was off I stayed at home. I slept, I read books, I did anything other than leave the house.” Says Barker.
Even once an officer retires from service, they may not have learned how to deal with that mental state. If an officer wants to secure their retirement pension they will need to work 20 years. That can be 20 years of hypervigilance.
“The downfall for a lot of cops is that they don’t know anything else. When you retire and that hypervigilance drops, and you’re left sitting with it all the time, it can be a rude awakening.” Officer Voce explains.
In addition to being a potentially debilitating mental state for the officer themselves, hypervigilance can often affect those close to the officer.
Personal Relationships
“No one talks to their wives. For me, whenever I came home I didn’t talk to my wife. Does your wife really want to worry about you all day? So you tend to just not talk about it.” Barker comments.
The United States has one of the highest divorce rates in the world, at approximately 40 to 50 percent. Among police officers, it is upwards of 75 percent. This may be for a variety of reasons, the most common of which is how the stresses of the job are handled. Other reasons may be the length of the work hours or a substance abuse issue.
Many law enforcement officers choose not to discuss the stress and trauma of their job because it is often considered taboo.
The Stigma
“There is that tough-guy persona, you have to be tough, you have to stand for it, you don’t have emotions, right? You didn’t want to be vulnerable, you know, you wanted to be that tough guy.” Barker remarks.
Unfortunately, this sentiment is echoed throughout departments across the country. Many officers adopt the opinion that asking for help is a sign of weakness, or that needing help is not “manly”.
“I don’t know if it’s the macho thing, or like John Wayne, they don’t want to admit they need help because they may think it’s a sign of weakness.” Officer Brown notes.
Some officers may also be wary of acknowledging they have a mental health problem because their colleagues may think that something is “wrong” with them.
“I think it’s not exposed so much because it’s the fear of losing their job or the fear of, you know, I’m a big bad cop or I’m a big bad swat officer.” Says Voce.
This feeling is often driven by fear of the potential consequences, such as career setbacks, stigma from others, or having their weapon revoked. Voce stated that having your gun taken away is “like having you-know-what taken away”.
“The fear that police officers have if they admitted they had an issue, like maybe alcohol, is that ‘oh now they’re onto me, I might lose my job.’” Brown explains.
This fear of possible stigma, consequences, trauma experienced on duty, as well as the absence of interpersonal relationships is what leads many officers to self-medicate their emotions through drugs or alcohol.
Substance Abuse
The problem with using drugs and/or alcohol as a coping mechanism for mental health issues is that it only makes both problems worse. Substance abuse can lead to problems with work performance and relationships, thus causing more depression and stress. This results in further substance abuse, and so the cycle continues. Frank Voce, a former alcohol abuser himself, refers to this cycle as “the labyrinth”.
When looking at 89 reported NYPD suicides, it was discovered 72 percent had alcohol in their system at the time of death.
When an individual self-medicates as a coping mechanism, the risk of becoming dependent increases significantly according to the Addiction Center.
The risk of dependency is exacerbated by the access that officers have to substances while responding to overdose calls or dealing with drug-related arrests. Alcohol is also widely considered to be a part of “police culture”. Voce described it as being a part of the “cool kids club”. A 2011 study by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism found that 25 percent of police officers drank “to be part of the team” during social gatherings.
The same study indicated that while surveying officers in urban areas, 18 percent of males and 16 percent of females testified to suffering negative consequences from alcohol use. The study also concluded that 7.8 percent of those polled met the criteria for lifetime alcohol dependence.
Substance abuse combined with the factors described earlier makes for possibly lethal consequences.
The Painful Numbers
“Mental health is very important. Especially as a police officer, like, you have a firearm. That’s no joke.” Voce advises.
The National Institutes of Health found the average life expectancy of a police officer to be 57, almost 22 years younger than the general population. Why might this be the case?
The suicide risk cannot be overlooked.
The addiction center reports that suicide among law enforcement is so predominant that the number of officers who died by suicide is more than triple that of officers killed in the line of duty. Within the last five years, 881 police officers took their own life.
It has also been reported that one in five law enforcement officers will have suicidal ideations in their lifetime. Per 100,000, NYPD alone has a suicide rate that is double that of the city’s population.
The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention compiled a list of some of the more frequent warning signs and risk factors that can lead to suicide. The list is harrowingly similar to the environments of police officers.
Environmental risks
- Access to lethal means including firearms and drugs.
- Prolonged stress or stressful life events.
- Exposure to another person’s suicide.
Behavioral warning signs
- Increased use of alcohol or drugs
- Withdrawing from activities
- Isolating from family and friends
- Sleep irregularity and fatigue (often caused by stress and anxiety)
- Changes in mood: depression, anxiety, irritability, or agitation.
These risks and warning signs are different for each person, but the similarities should not be written off. Correlation does not equal causation, however, police officers need to be aware of the risks associated with their mental health.
Officer Gene Brown gives one final admonishment.
“The last thing you want to hear is that an officer took his own life because he was too proud to ask for help” Officer Brown advises.
