Introduction
The police have an invaluable role in modern democratic society, tasked with sustaining a status quo by preventing crime, maintaining social order, apprehending criminals, and the provision of a wide range of services to the citizens. The police's work by its nature demands that, at some point, confront and engage the citizens in conflict and dangerous situations ( Muhlhausen et al., 2019) . Given that the police find themselves in multiple hostile situations, physical violence, harshness and continual involvement in high-pressure situations, and the need to respond urgently, the police job is ranked as being a highly stressful and risky profession. The police job is characterized by having to continually deal with potential risks and have their lives at risk on several occasions. The job description and characteristics of a policeman are directly connected to work-related stress and stress triggers, stressors. Most professionals undergoing extreme work-related stress suffer bad health, suffering from continual exhaustion, show more absenteeism, are not satisfied with their work assignments, are not fully committed to their careers, and retire early. When a worker experiences emotional tension related to their job, the worker may develop heightened and persistent alcohol and substance abuse, cardiovascular disease, digestive system disorders, divorce, and depressive disorders. When overwhelmed by stress, a worker may choose to terminate their own life. This paper examines the primary issues that cause stress for the police officers and the stress impact on their personal and professional life.
Causes of Stress to Police
The Police Stress Environment
The primary sources of stress by the police officers can be classified into two basic categories; the first category of importance is those stress arising from the 'job content.' The job-related stressors include shift work, heavy work schedules, long hours of work, court work, overwork, threats and traumatic events to the detriment of their psychological and physical health. The second category is the stress arising from 'job context.' The job context stressors are the organizational stressors which imply to the organization characteristic and the behavior of the persons who generate the stress, like co-worker relations and bureaucracy. The police are regularly exposed to human death and suffering; on several occasions, this results in a negative perception of life ( Sheehan, & Van Hasselt, 2013) . Being exposed to severe cases of people suffering and death is also related to psychological effects like post-traumatic stress disorder, suicide ideation, and depression. Officers are also known to work for longer hours, with frequent inflexible rotating shifts typically contribute to insufficient sleep for the police officers, and as a result lowering their stress resistance levels. The shift work schedules may disrupt the officers' family life, strained relationships, and work during the holidays.
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Stressors Inherent to Work
Several studies regarding police stress have specifically narrowed down to the police work features and the highly systemized structural design of the national police departments. Generally, the most severe types of fear the police officers' experiences are perceived to be associated with the use of deadly force. When a police officer loses their colleagues in a violent incident at work, the kind of stress they undergo reinforces a broader and powerful reality regarding the police work-associated pressure. Therefore, the police personnel are seized with fear of a persistent unforeseen and present potential for harm, assault, and death. Even though such occasions are accompanied by extreme stress, they denote just a small part of the whole number of activities that a police officer experiences during their daily patrols, especially a small police department. The argument provide proof that working in the police force is more stressful in comparison to other professions
Additionally, some earlier studies suggest that the policing features generally regarded as significant stressors like killing or hurting a person or experiencing a colleague's death, maybe overemphasized as a policing stressor. Other scholars assert that there is no scientific backing or sustaining the conventional perception that the police profession is inherently stressful. A more significant number of studies reveal that law enforcement personnel are not more stressed in comparison to other occupations. For example, in their research, Pendleton, Scotland made a comparison of government workers to police officers and firefighters in regards to their stress levels. The researcher found that the police officers' level of stress was measured to be between the stress level of the firefighters and government workers. In another study, Hart Wearing also discovered that the police officers' job was not the most stressful, though it is stressful.
Stressor Nested in Organizational Structure
Earlier research studies regarding stress on the law enforcement police examined the police administrative practices and organizational layout as the primary justification for occupational stress. Organizational stressors include personnel practices, workplace conditions, and supervision. In particular, Reiser agreed that excessive and broader department regulations that are codified work conditions but usually constrained creative options to the sophisticated scenarios might be a severe stressor. For example, the file and rank police officers are never allowed to participate in the policymaking process. When the law enforcement officers realize insufficient leadership and lack of support, there is an increased level of skepticism and distrust towards the managers and their superiors, accompanied by declining levels of performance.
The need for goal-oriented managerial practices and the hierarchical organizational structures are generally recognized as occupational causes of stress at the place of work. For example, expectations for police officers to deal with a disproportional amount of paperwork, working in a task that is highly repetitive or mandatory in a department for all the activities within their scope. Therefore, to appraise bureaucratic influence over the law enforcement officers' occupational stress, a research study adopted bureaucracy level assessment and discovered that the level of bureaucracy is positively related to the stress level.
Numerous questionnaire-based research studies have continuously discovered that organizational stressors are commonplace compared to the task associated with stressors. For instance, analyzing the gathered data from 811 law enforcement officers in a Turkish National Police force, the scholars observed that the most significant stressors are based on the structure of the police department and the management practices (Buker and Wiecko). Additionally, in another study constituting 11 police departments, the scholars discovered that the view that officers' insufficient influence on department policy and work was one of the strongest predictors of the law enforcers stressors (Morashet al.).
Zhao et al. examined the relations between the five primary job motivational factors and the perceptions of the police officers towards work-related stressors with 300 police officers in Pacific Northwest police departments. The research results indicated that feedback and autonomy from work influenced personnel's physiological and psychological distress symptoms favorably (motivators) while the de-motivators were bureaucracy index levels ( El Sayed, Sanford, & Kerley , 2019)
Impact of Stress on Police Officers
Health Problems
The police officer's primary responsibility is being a civil service worker and a citizen protector. When robbery occur, people die in road accidents, or when someone is in a severe problem, the police are called in to help. In comparison to the emergency medical services and the firefighters' rescue services, the police are known to endure higher levels of stress. Since the police officers on a typical day experience severe traumatic events, there is a high potential for PTSD.
Sugimoto and Oltjenbruns (2001) define PTSD as an anxiety disorder affecting a person exposed to situations involving great harm or death situations. The officers who cannot cope with the stressful conditions are diagnosed with PTSD. Older officers are more prone to getting PTSD. They are reported to respond to PTSD by not speaking out, chose to remain silent about the situation, making things worse for them. The silence is part of the police subculture and a healthy man perspective. The police are perceived to be more energetic people both emotionally and physically, and they can endure tough situations, which is not entirely true for all the police officers. The police officers who look for help are stigmatized as being mentally ill or weak. STS or Secondary Traumatic Stress is another common stress disorder similar to PTSD. According to Sugimoto and Oltjenbruns (2001) confirms that the condition STS was first defined by scientists Figley and Kleber. The two identified STS as having know-how that an essential person in your life has undergone a tragic situation from which an STS develops.
When the law enforcement officer combines the stress that comes with the job, and the level of empowerment and ability to control others that comes along with the situation (power), there arises problems at home. Johnson and Subramanian (2005) confirms that some law enforcement officer experienced trouble turning off their authoritative power, and as a result, abuse their spouses, relatives and those close to them. Since wives are part of the subculture, that directly makes them part of the policing fraternity in a manner that most things happening at home are kept secret and informally policed by the husband. The wives, on the other hand, are a frightened lot of their male husbands, keeping quiet and hiding the real situation, with the fear of losing their marriage through a divorce if they report the abuse. Again, the female police officers experience dual stress as a result of being a mother and an officer.
Violence and Burnout
In an experiment on police officers and domestic abuse, Johnson and Subramanian (2005) examined why spousal abuse is a common phenomenon is some law enforcement officer's families. The scholars used six variables, including external burnouts, alcohol use, authoritarian spillover, spouse violence, department withdrawal, and violence exposure. External burnout is about how the law enforcers feel about their job and how they think that the citizens should be treated. On the other hand, authoritarian spillover is about how the law enforcers treat their families and love ones when not at work. The researchers wanted to know whether the police officers treated their family members as their loved ones, with respect or like people they meet on the streets. Department withdrawal, in this study, referred to the police officer's opinions regarding whether they were passionate and loved their job or they want to avoid coming to work or quit their job or even retire. The spousal valence variable referred to the law enforcers depended on using force in some situations. Alcohol use variable was used to measure the amount of alcohol police officers consumed and for what reasons. Lastly, the valence exposure variable was a measure of whether the police officers were exposed to any nature of violence in their lives.
Johnson and Subramanian (2005) discovered that about 40% of the law enforcers participating in the study reported having abused their wives at some point. Burnout was the highest correlation to abuse, followed by authoritarian spillover. The other variables revealed no relationship. The researchers also observed that even though the majority of officers' abuse alcohol, it did not contribute to abusing their spouses. Additionally, violence exposure did also not add to abuse.
Gender
He et al. (2002) conducted a research study using Baltimore, Maryland police officer's data. The primary focus of the research was gender differences in policing. This study chose this domain because no sufficient reviews were looking into gender differences and challenges in policing at the time. The author says that earlier research studies show that women undergo more physical and psychological stress compared to men. There are several reasons for women being more stressed. Generally, the nature of law enforcement job is aggressive, violent, and gruesome and maybe too much for most women to endure. Female officers are known to be playing second fiddle in the organization and are often under harassment from their male counterparts and from the organization itself. The policing environment can be harsh, and a female officer may find herself isolated from main events, with a feeling of being inferior to the male officers and low self-esteem.
References
El Sayed, S. A., Sanford, S. M., & Kerley, K. R. (2019). Understanding workplace stress among federal law enforcement officers. American journal of criminal justice , 44 (3), 409-429.
He, N., Zhao, J., & Archbold, C. (2002). Gender and police stress: The convergent anddivergent impact of the work environment, work-family conflict, and stress coping mechanisms of female and male police officers. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, 25, 687-708.
Johnson, L., Todd, M., & Subramanian, G. (2005). Violence in police families: Work-familyspillover. Journal of Family Violence, 20, 3-12.
Morash, M., Kwak, D., & Haarr, R. (2006). Gender differences in the predictors of policestress. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management, 29, 541-563.
Muhlhausen, D. B., Sullivan, K., Spivak, H., Stiver, W., Violanti, J., Scallon, C. J., ... & United States of America. (2019). Protecting Against Stress and Trauma: Research Lessons for Law Enforcement-Defining the Problem.
Sheehan, D. C., & Van Hasselt, V. B. (2003). Identifying law enforcement stress reactions early. FBI L. Enforcement Bull. , 72 , 12.
