Due to the stressors inherent in the law enforcement profession, police officers may be at increased risk for a variety of personal and mental health-related concerns. Despite these tendencies, officers have historically refrained from seeking psychological services. Several factors have been identified to explain their hesitance, including public stigma and self-stigma regarding mental health issues. In this study, sworn police officers in Texas and Oklahoma completed a 62-item online survey related to their attitudes toward seeking mental health services, mental health stigma, willingness to seek services, and perceptions of other officers' willingness to seek services. The first objective of the study was to identify the role of public stigma and self-stigma in predicting attitudes toward seeking mental health services among police officers. Consistent with the study hypotheses, the results indicate that public stigma and self-stigma were negatively correlated with attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help. Furthermore, self-stigma fully mediated the relationship between public stigma and attitudes toward seeking help, and the overall model explained 56% of the variance in attitude scores. Previous research has suggested that officers may tend to underestimate their colleagues' willingness to seek psychological services, thus demonstrating the concept of pluralistic ignorance. The second objective of the study was to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the pluralistic ignorance effect as it pertains to help-seeking attitudes among police officers, with regard to several common presenting concerns. As expected, results suggest that officers underestimated their colleagues' willingness to seek mental health services for family issues, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, and physiological complaints due to stress. In other words, officers tended to believe that their peers were less willing to seek mental health services than they actually were. Implications for training and future research are discussed.

Police work creates unique marital difficulties. There are many factors that add stress to police officers' marriages, including shift work, long hours and unconventional schedules, divided commitment between work and family roles, and perceived personality changes among officers. When police officers carry work-related stress and behaviors into the home, they may experience difficulties in their family relationships. Unfortunately, relatively few researchers have investigated the impact of police work on spouses. In this study, we administered a needs assessment to police officers and their spouses to determine the types of difficulties evident in their marriages. Results indicated that officers and spouses generally agreed on stressors and sources of support. Although spouses reported feeling pride about being married to an officer, they also noted financial concerns, workfamily conflict, and law enforcement-specific stressors, such as negative public attitudes toward police. Officers and spouses reported relying on friends and family for support more than on professional sources. Implications for prevention and intervention when working with police officers and their spouses are discussed.

No abstract

This brief article serves as an introduction to the special issue of The Counseling Psychologist devoted to non-traditional teaching methods that promote social justice. We introduce the historical importance of social justice in the field of counseling psychology and discuss current events that maintain the need for further work in this area. We introduce the need for a focus on pedagogy that promotes social justice. We briefly summarize the manuscripts in the two special issue volumes and discuss the broad categories into which they fall. Finally, we call for further scholarship and action related to innovative teaching that promotes social justice.

Despite the emphasis on multicultural counseling competence and social justice in counseling psychology, the mechanisms behind building skills related to effective work remain elusive. This qualitative study explored the experiences of student-participants during a service learning course based on social justice principles in Belize. The researchers sought to inform how a non-traditional teaching methodology—immersion service learning activism—might affect these students’ development. The researchers used Consensual Qualitative Research to analyze interviews and journals through a collaborative and reflective process. Eleven domains emerged from the analysis. Results confirmed past research related to immersion and service learning, including personal and professional development and changes in diversity attitudes. There were also unanticipated themes related to complex interpersonal and group dynamics. These findings demonstrate the influence of immersion, service learning, and group process in intra- as well as interpersonal development and skill building related to cultural competency and social justice activism.