Psychology Essays Forensic Psychology

psychology Essays Forensic PsychologyForensic Psychology Critic eachy discuss interrogation studies that afford investigated the mental factors associated with legal philosophy force sample.There is a natural precondition in the public consciousness that being a practice of law officer is a strivingful occupation. It is thought that the effects of turn overing with the kinds of people and situations that constabulary force officers argon regularly required to must be tenorful. This perception is non just confined to lay-people psychiatrists and occupational physicians find that police officers ar in the top three occupations that atomic subjugate 18 account to the Occupational Disease erudition Network (ODIN). Similarly, studies such as Schmitdke, Fricke Lester (1999) have frame a high rate of suicide amongst police officers than other alike(p) members of a German population. In a recent review of 26 different professions in the UK, Johnson, Cooper, Cartwr ight, Donald, Taylor Millet (2005) put in that police officers were amongst the top 6 professions for high levels of stress and lower-ranking levels of job satisfaction.Like any area of psychological query, individual differences are going to be strategic in how a person reacts to a situation. There has been some search carried out into the different individual factors that tinct police stress in a spot of different police forces around the world. Many of the inquiryed populations have non, however, involved the police, but the factors that have been examined are common amongst occupational groups. Amongst these, Clarke Cooper (2000) include compositors case A behaviour, veto affectivity, the locus of control, coping styles and psychological rigour. Negative affectivity, for example, is a tipency in an individual to show generally negative emotions and reactions across a localise of situations. The query has frequently comprise a link between stress and negative a ffectivity. Similarly thither is a large amount of research into Type A personalities. Type A personalities are often impatient, assay for achievement and are precise competitive. This factor has been shown to be important in connection with stress. Davidson Veno (1980) report that 75% of a sample of police officers showed that they had Type A personalities not a surprise considering some of the job requirements.The belief of psychological hardiness has similarly been shown to be important in stress reaction this has been defined by Lambert Lambert (1999) as involving the factors of control, allegiance and challenge. Control refers to the extent to which a person believes that they have an influence over the things that happen to them, commitment envisages an involvement with events that are happening, and challenge infers an approach to manner that incorporates and expects change as a matter of course. Hills Norvell (1991) examine psychological hardiness in a sample of 234 highway patrol officers. The determinations showed that hardiness as well as neuroticism (almost the same as negative affectivity) moderated the kin between measures of stress and its physiological and psychological consequences. oft of the older research into stress in the police has concentrated on the negative daze of police work. It has tended to assume that bad drives at work will tend to precede in stress, which in turn results in an absence of benefit. This whitethorn not be correct, as research has shown that bad experiences do not tend to have a negative effect on upbeat (Cohen Hoberman, 1983). hart, Wearing, Headey (1995) wanted to examine, then, how personality, coping and work experiences affected well-being. 527 Australian police officers stainless a Perceived Quality of Life questionnaire that incorporated a number of different measures including the Satisfaction With Life scale (Diener, Emmons, Larsen Griffin, 1985) and the General Well-Being Questionn aire (Cox Gott, 1990). This research made a number of findings based on these data. For their first finding they compared the psychological well-being of police officers to other professions, in this case initiate teachers, tertiary students and community norms. It was found that police officers showed similar levels of psychological well-being to these other groups. This baksheesh the authors of the this hit the books to conclude that police officers have design levels of psychological well-being. This finding can be questioned though, as Johnson et al. (2005) found that teachers also tend to have high levels of stress and low levels of job satisfaction. Hart et al. (1995) are not making valid comparisons. That caveat aside, the authors did look to a greater extent specifically at what factors were associated with higher levels of stress. Here they confirmed what has already been a consistent finding in the research that it is organisational variables that contribute more(pre nominal) to levels of stress than useable variables. In other words police officers in this sample, as in previous research, found their police departments a greater root of stress than dealing with criminals and the extreme situations they came into contact with during their job. As well as these aspects, this research also examined personality variables, police work experiences and coping strategies to give ear how they affected well-being but no in particular sozzled findings were reported other than some moderate correlations.Findings about the importance of organisational variables over operational variables have also been found in a sample of police officers from the UK. Collins Gibbs (2003) administered a postal questionnaire to 1,206 members of a county police force who were constables and sergeants. This questionnaire essay to assess the complete loop of the stress-strain cycle by obtaining measures of perceived occupational stress and perceived life stress. Further to this measures were taken of personality factors, moderators in the form of accessible support and the individuals commute pattern to look for a correlation there as well. In addition to these the General health Questionnaire was administered. Collins Gibbs (2003) report previous severalise of two studies in the UK that found that levels of intellectual ill-health amongst police officers was between 17 and 22% (Brown Campbell, 1990, Alexander, Walker, Innes Irving, 1993). In this playing area, however, mental ill-health had risen to 42% of the sample suggesting that levels of stress, and/or its effects, had risen in the 10 years between the studies. In examining the cause of the stress, this study confirmed the result found in Hart et al. (1995) in finding that it was organisational stressors that had a greater effect than operational stressors. The measurement of other factors such as personality, cordial support and shift work did not provide any particularly significa nt results. For example little association was found between shift work and stress levels, contrary to previous research which has found it to be associated with higher levels of stress (Brown Campbell, 1990). A clear disadvantage of this study in being able to generalise to other police officers was that it was carried out in a relatively small non-metropolitan police force. Different balances of operational issues and organisational demands whitethorn be present. The authors counter this criticism citing a study into Manchester Metropolitan police force which found a similar concentration on the organisational issues (Crowe Stradling, 1993).Much of the older research on stress in the police suffered from methodological flaws, such as using incorrect measures and failing to compare police officers with other occupational groups (Hart et al., 1995). Brough (2004) researched police officers as well as conflagrate and ambulance officers to compare the levels of stress and the resp onse. It was found that levels of psychological injury and organisational stressors were relatively similar across the services, while again, the importance of organisational stressors over operational stressors was repeated.Looking straight off more closely at stress, and what kinds of stress police officers have to deal with, it is useful to outline a model of stress to inform the discussion. Mitchell labor (1990) explain that stress reactions can be categorised into three main(prenominal) different forms cumulative, slow up and acute. Cumulative stress builds up over a period of time from a number of adventures, while both delayed and acute stress may have their primary cause in one particular incident, often called a critical incident. Police officers are often exposed to a number of critical incidents so the study of their effects on officers is of importance.The effects of this stress have been found to be considerable in many studies. One particularly strong fount of reaction to stress is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which may be caused by experiencing an event involving the threat of death or an real death. This is cl other(a) something that a police officer is more likely to experience in their career with regularity than in most other professions. Ursano McCarroll (1990), for example, found that the handling of dead bodies and parts of bodies was a significant psychological stressor that caused psychological trauma. Stephens Miller (1998) investigated the rates of PTSD amongst a sample of 527 New Zealand police officers. They found that the rate of PTSD was similar to that experienced by members of a different population that had experienced a traumatic event of a similar nature. The majority of individuals in both groups recovered successfully from the experience. An important finding of this study was that a relationship was found between the number of traumatic events witnessed and subsequent diagnoses of PTSD. Research in the UK has augmented these findings, Green (2004) reports evidence from Robinson, Sigman Wilson (1997) that found the preponderance of PTSD amongst suburban police officers of 13%, this compares to the prevalence amongst the general population of 2-3%. Green (2004) examined whether PTSD was any more grueling amongst members of the police force, once established, than it was in the overall population. The study found that there were no significant differences between the two groups. A criticism of this study was that the number of participants was limited, with only 31 police officers and 72 civilians taking part. Still, the strong effects of trauma are replicated in other research Carlier, Lamberts Gersons (1997) found in a sample of 262 traumatised police officers that, 3 months after a trauma they showed introversion, emotional exhaustion. In addition, at 12 months post trauma they continued to have difficulty expressing their emotions, suffered job satisfaction and lack of social support amongst other symptoms.How police officers process traumatic events, then, seems to be very important psychological factor in the stress it causes. Karlsson Christianson (2003) examined the phenomenology of traumatic experiences in a sample of 162 Swedish police officers. The research found that all the police officers who took part were able to remember a traumatic incident from while they had been on duty. The memory of that traumatic event tended to come from the officers early career and usually involved all of the senses many aspects of which could be remembered in considerable detail. The fact that it was early events that most readily came to mind suggested that these had the great impact on a police officer. Karlsson Christianson (2003) also cite preliminary work by Stradling, Crowe Tuohy (1993) in the UK that found that during the socialisation process into the police force, there was a change of quality so that the individual had a more professional attitu de to their work. This was often associated with a more cynical approach and self-perception. Karlsson Christianson (2003) make the point that the alternative explanation is that police officers patently become more adept at dealing with the nerve-racking situations with which they have to deal.From this survey of some of the research into the factors associated with police stress it can be seen that there are many aspects to consider. Individual differences have an important role to play in reactions to stressful events. In comparing sources of stress, much of the research has found the surprising result that organisational rather than operational factors are more important. It is possible that organisational factors become more important as operational factors diminish. The research into the phenomenology and coping mechanisms shows that police officers perhaps learn how to cope better with stressful events. Despite this, it is clear that witnessing a number of traumatic events is likely to lead to PTSD. A large proportion of the research looks at averages over pretty large populations which masks the fine-grain details that are better explored by Karlsson Christiansons (2003) study. A tincture at gaps in the current research is provided by Johnson et al. (2005) which found that police officers at lower levels suffered higher levels of stress than those in more higher-ranking positions. These authors suggest that this might be the result of higher levels of emotional fatigue a concept that has not yet been carefully examined in this occupational population.