Law Enforcement Officers’ Barriers to Seeking Mental Health Services: a Scoping Review

Mental health and wellbeing of border security personnel: scoping review

“…It is unclear whether negative public perceptions are a bigger issue for border security staff than law enforcement generally, or whether public image has simply been overlooked as a potential stressor in other law enforcement studies. There was some evidence that border security personnel were reluctant to seek help for mental health problems due to stigma and fear of repercussions; again, this reflects law enforcement generally [ 12 ].…”

“…Additionally, current National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines [ 30 ] recommend providing staff with resilience and coping strategies such as mindfulness training and stress management training. Taking steps to improve the organizational culture (such as fostering a more supportive environment and reducing stigma around mental health) could facilitate help-seeking when needed [ 12 ]. Other recommendations to potentially improve staff wellbeing include increasing opportunities for self-development and career advancement; taking steps to improve the organization’s public image; improving resources and training available to staff; and ensuring that supervisors feel confident to speak to staff about traumatic events or that formal peer support processes used by other trauma-exposed organizations are utilised [ 28 ].…”

“…Other key predictors of poor wellbeing appear to be a lack of organizational support [ 9 , 10 ], exposure to traumatic events [ 11 ] and high cumulative critical incident exposure [ 4 , 10 ]. Additionally, officers are often reluctant to seek mental health support due to negative perceptions of mental health support and concerns about job confidentiality and potential consequences on their careers [ 12 ].…”

Resilience pathways and help-seeking preferences for Ontario police services

“…This model is the ideal method of analysis for this data because it allows the use of multiple indicators and allows for the estimation of reciprocal, direct, and indirect/mediated relationships among constructs (Morrison et al, 2017). From a focused review of previous research (Regehr et al, 2021;Richards et al, 2021;Velazquez & Hernandez, 2019), the following latent variables were selected as factors that contribute to resilience: attitudes towards mental health treatment, health literacy, selfrated mental health, self-rated physical health, level of stress, and sense of community belonging. In addition, demographic data was collected as well as nominal preferences for mental health support.…”

“…Occupational stress among PSP has been identified as a growing local and global concern (Kim et al, 2018;Pietrantoni & Prati, 2008). Research has largely focused on the prevalence of PTSI among PSP (Carleton et al, 2018a;Faust & Ven, 2014) and/or examining interventions to alleviate the distress of PTSI (Richards et al, 2021;Regehr & Bober, 2005). There are gaps in understanding the nature of occupational stress within and between different PSP populations (University of Regina, 2016).…”