A Biological Approach to Building Resilience and Wellness Capacity Among Police Exposed to Posttraumatic Stress Injuries: Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial

Andersen, Judith P.; Nota, Paula M. Di; Alavi, Nazanin; Anderson, Greg; Bennell, Craig; McGregor, Carolyn; Ricciardelli, Rosemary; Scott, Sarah Caroline; Shipley, Peter; Vincent, Michelle

doi:10.2196/33492

“…Evidence-based self-monitoring may implicitly encourage meta-cognitive practices, support active engagement with positive choices for mental health, and facilitate earlier access to care. Accordingly, self-monitoring itself may be an under-used and readily -accessible intervention, in addition to being a tool for measurement-based care or evaluating intervention effectiveness within clinical trials ( 62 ). The current results require replication and extension; in the interim, the results provide useful information about participation, adherence, and engagement with self-monitoring, which may inform ongoing assessments of self-monitoring as a proactive intervention for protecting mental health.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trouble with the curve: the 90–9-1 rule to measure volitional participation inequalities among Royal Canadian Mounted Police cadets during training

Teckchandani,

Shields,

Andrews

et al. 2024

Front. Psychiatry

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ObjectiveThe Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Study includes longitudinal multimodal assessments of RCMP cadets from pre-training (i.e., starting the Cadet Training Program [CTP]) to post-deployment and for five years thereafter. The data allow for investigating the multidimensionality of volitional participation in digital health data collection frameworks within serial data collection platforms and the impact of participation inequalities by classifying cadets using the 90–9-1 rule. By classifying cadets as Lurkers, Contributors, and Superusers formally described by the 90–9-1 rule, where 90% of actors do not participate, 9% seldom contribute, and 1% contribute substantially allows for the assessing of relationships between participation inequalities in self-monitoring behaviors as well as whether mental health disorder symptoms at pre-training (i.e., starting the CTP) were associated with subsequent participation.MethodsParticipants were asked to complete a Full Assessment prior to their training at CTP, as well as short daily surveys throughout their training. Participation frequency was described using a process where participants were rank ordered by the number of daily surveys completed and classified into one of three categories. Full assessment surveys completed prior to their training at CTP included screening tools for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), major depressive disorder (MDD), posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), alcohol use disorder (AUD), and panic disorder (PD). The Kruskal-Wallis H test was used to assess differences in participation rates between mental health disorder symptom screening groups for each measure at pre-training, and Spearman’s Rho was used to test for associations amongst self-reported Full Assessment screening tool responses and the number of daily surveys completed during CTP.ResultsThere were 18557 daily survey records collected from 772 participants. The rank-ordering of cadets by the number of daily surveys completed produced three categories in line with the 90–9-1 rule: Superusers who were the top 1% of cadets (n=8) and produced 6.4% of all recordings; Contributors who were the next 9% of cadets (n=68) and produced 49.2% of the recordings; and Lurkers who were the next 90% of cadets (n=695) and produced 44.4% of daily survey recordings. Lurkers had the largest proportion of positive screens for self-reported mental health disorders at pre-training.ConclusionThe creation of highly individualized, population-based mental health injury programs has been limited by an incomplete understanding of the causal relationships between protective factors and mental health. Disproportionate rates of disengagement from persons who screen positive for mental health disorders further compounds the difficulty in understanding the relationships between training programs and mental health. The current results suggest persons with mental health challenges may be less likely to engage in some forms of proactive mental health training. The current results also provide useful information about participation, adherence, and engagement that can be used to inform evidence-based paradigm shifts in health-related data collection in occupational populations.

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“…The good news is that interventions that address maladaptive physiological responses to stress by teaching police to modulate their physiology demonstrate effectiveness above and beyond existing wellness programs (Andersen et al, 2023b;Di Nota et al, 2021a) For example, heart rate variability biofeedback (HRVBF) began to be used with law enforcement more than a decade ago (McCraty et al, 2009;McCraty & Atkinson, 2012). Advances in the use of HRVBF tailored to police specifically reveal immediate and sustained improvements in situational awareness, lethal force decision-making, and autonomic recovery from acute stress following a multi-day autonomic modulation intervention (Andersen et al, 2015(Andersen et al, , 2018Andersen & Gustafsberg, 2016).…”

Section: A Physiological Mechanism For Negative Health and Performanc...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Physiological Responses to Organizational Stressors Among Police Managers

Nota

¹

,

Scott

²

,

Huhta

³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Police officers demonstrate increased risk of physical and mental health conditions due to repeated and prolonged exposure to stressful occupational conditions. Occupational stress is broken into two types: operational stress, related to the content of field duties (e.g., physical demands); and organizational stress, related to cultural and structural contexts (e.g., interpersonal relationships). Applied police research focuses on physiological activation in operational tasks as a mechanism explaining health risk and non-optimal performance outcomes. However, recent survey-based studies indicate numerous organizational stressors associated with self-reported mental health symptoms. The question of whether organizational stressors elicit significant physiological activity remains unknown. The current proof-of-concept field study tests the hypothesis that police managers will display significant physiological reactivity before, during, and after engaging in reality-based scenarios representative of stressful police management tasks developed from evidence-based pedagogical approaches. A sample of 25 training police managers (7 female, M = 16 +/- 5.3 years of experience) completed 5 reality-based scenarios, including resolving a heated conflict between colleagues, delivering negative feedback to a subordinate, and critical incident command. Significant increases in heart rate relative to rest were observed during all tasks, and in anticipation of several tasks. Greater increases in reactive heart rate were associated with longer recovery times. Sex differences and relationships between objective biological and subjective psychological measures of stress are discussed. The current findings demonstrate significant physiological responses to organizational stressors similar to levels observed during operational tasks, despite the absence of physical or aerobic exertion. Implications for police health and training are discussed.

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Physiological Responses to Organizational Stressors Among Police Managers

Di Nota,

Scott,

Huhta

et al. 2024

Appl Psychophysiol Biofeedback

1

0

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Police officers demonstrate increased risk of physical and mental health conditions due to repeated and prolonged exposure to stressful occupational conditions. Occupational stress is broken into two types: operational stress, related to the content of field duties (e.g., physical demands); and organizational stress, related to cultural and structural contexts (e.g., interpersonal relationships). Applied police research focuses on physiological activation in operational tasks as a mechanism explaining health risk and non-optimal performance outcomes. However, recent survey-based studies indicate numerous organizational stressors associated with self-reported mental health symptoms. The question of whether organizational stressors elicit significant physiological activity remains unknown. The current proof-of-concept field study tests the hypothesis that police managers will display significant physiological reactivity before, during, and after engaging in reality-based scenarios representative of stressful police management tasks developed from evidence-based pedagogical approaches. A sample of 25 training police managers (7 female, M = 16 +/- 5.3 years of experience) completed 5 reality-based scenarios, including resolving a heated conflict between colleagues, delivering negative feedback to a subordinate, and critical incident command. Significant increases in heart rate relative to rest were observed during all tasks, and in anticipation of several tasks. Greater increases in reactive heart rate were associated with longer recovery times. Sex differences and relationships between objective biological and subjective psychological measures of stress are discussed. The current findings demonstrate significant physiological responses to organizational stressors similar to levels observed during operational tasks, despite the absence of physical or aerobic exertion. Implications for police health and training are discussed.

show abstract

A Biological Approach to Building Resilience and Wellness Capacity Among Police Exposed to Posttraumatic Stress Injuries: Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial

Cited by 5 publications

References 86 publications

Trouble with the curve: the 90–9-1 rule to measure volitional participation inequalities among Royal Canadian Mounted Police cadets during training

Trouble with the curve: the 90–9-1 rule to measure volitional participation inequalities among Royal Canadian Mounted Police cadets during training

Physiological Responses to Organizational Stressors Among Police Managers

Physiological Responses to Organizational Stressors Among Police Managers

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