Mental Disorder Symptoms among Public Safety Personnel in Canada (original) (raw)
Related papers
Mental Health Risk Factors Related to COVID-19 among Canadian Public Safety Professionals
Psychiatry International
Public safety personnel (PSP) are known to experience difficult and demanding occupational environments, an environment that has been complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Firefighters, paramedics, and public safety communicators were among the front-line workers that continued to serve the public throughout the course of the pandemic. The present study considered the potential impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on self-reported symptoms of mental health challenges in Canadian firefighters, paramedics, and public safety communicators. Participants were firefighters (n = 123), paramedics (n = 246), and public safety communicators (n = 48), who completed an online survey, including demographics, questions related to COVID-19 exposure and worry, the Patient Health Questionnaire-9, the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7, the Social Interaction Phobia Scale, and the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist-5. Results revealed that risk factors for increased mental health symptom reporting were ...
Mental Health Secretariat: Collaboration for public safety personnel (PSP) mental health in Ontario
Journal of Community Safety and Wellbeing, 2023
Mental health issues, and more specifically suicide, within the policing community have been a growing concern in recent years. In 2018 alone, there were nine suicides among active and retired police officers in the province of Ontario. At the time, nine suicides in one year were shocking and began to raise focused awareness of mental health challenges facing the profession. In 2021, the Ontario Ministry of the Solicitor General created Mental Health Collaborative Tables comprised of key stakeholders, subject matter experts, public safety personnel (PSP) with lived experience, mental health clinicians, and researchers. The Mental Health Secretariat (MHS) is responsible for supporting the tables. The MHS is accountable to the Deputy Solicitor General and has a mandate to provide a provincial action plan to address mental health issues among PSP. This article explains key observations regarding Ontario's innovative approach to improving mental health supports for PSP and describes the perspective offered by Karen Prokopec, Manager, MHS at Ontario Ministry of the Solicitor General, and her colleague, Zarsanga Popal, Senior Performance Measurement and Evaluation Specialist with the MHS, on the establishment of the MHS.
Addressing the mental health impacts of COVID-19 on Canada’s frontline workers
Journal of Community Safety and Well-Being
Stress Disorder Act became law, after receiving all-party support in the Parliament of Canada. This groundbreaking Act acknowledges that those in certain occupations, including public safety personnel (PSP) such as police, firefighters, paramedics, search and rescue personnel, Indigenous emergency managers, correctional employees, operational and intelligence personnel, border services personnel, and public safety communicators, along with healthcare professionals (HCPs) and military personnel, are at greater risk of exposure to potentially traumatic events, and therefore are more likely to develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than the general population, just by doing their jobs (Public Health Agency of Canada [PHAC], 2019). The Act mandated PHAC to lead a coordinated, national approach to recognize PTSD among those within these occupational groups and, through this recognition, to help lay the groundwork for more timely access to mental health and well-being supports for those affected. As such, the Federal Framework on PTSD was created by PHAC in collaboration with multiple stakeholders. Through research, promotion, and implementation of best practices, education, awareness, and evidence-based treatments, this framework seeks to ensure the creation of solutions for those affected by occupation-related PTSD. The Federal Framework on PTSD Act was passed in 2018, and its relevance has only increased in significance during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to preliminary data from a study on the mental health effects of working the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic, 35% of Canadian PSP scored above 33 on the PCL-5, a self-report psychological instrument that assesses for the diagnostic symptoms of PTSD. Scores above 33 on the PCL-5 are compatible with the presence of symptoms severe enough to require formal treatment for PTSD. Furthermore, when screened for symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress using the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale 21 (DASS-21), an alarming percentage of PSP scored within the moderate to extremely severe range for depression (41%), for anxiety
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Background—Public safety personnel (PSP) are at heightened risk of developing mental health challenges due to exposures to diverse stressors including potentially psychologically traumatic experiences. An increased focus on protecting PSP mental health has prompted demand for interventions designed to enhance resilience. While hundreds of available interventions are aimed to improve resilience and protect PSPs’ mental health, research evidence regarding intervention effectiveness remains sparse. Methods—Focus groups with PSP elicited a discussion of psychoeducational program content, preferred modes of program delivery, when such training should occur, and to whom it ought to be targeted. Results—The results of thematic analyses suggest that PSP participants feel that contemporary approaches to improving mental health and resilience are lacking. While welcomed, the provision of sporadic one-off mental health and resilience programs by organizations was seen as insufficient, and the ...
Canadian Public Safety Personnel and Occupational Stressors: How PSP Interpret Stressors on Duty
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Canadian public safety personnel (e.g., correctional workers, firefighters) experience potential stressors as a function of their occupation. Occupational stressors can include organizational (e.g., job context) and operational (e.g., job content) elements. Operational stressors (e.g., exposures to potentially psychologically traumatic events) may be inevitable, but opportunities may exist to mitigate other occupational stressors for public safety personnel. Research exploring the diverse forms of stress among public safety personnel remains sparse. In our current qualitative study we provide insights into how public safety personnel interpret occupational stressors. We use a semi-grounded thematic approach to analyze what public safety personnel reported when asked to further comment on occupational stress or their work experiences in two open-ended comment fields of an online survey. We provide a more comprehensive understanding of how public safety personnel experience occupation...
Qualitatively Unpacking Canadian Public Safety Personnel Experiences of Trauma and Their Well-Being
Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice, 2018
We thematically analysed responses volunteered by 828 of the nearly 9,000 public safety personnel (PSP) who participated in an online survey on occupational stress injuries and symptoms. Participants responded to an open-ended optional request for “additional feedback” located at the end of the survey. Salient response themes reveal that, across occupations and organizations, PSP report witnessing, enduring, and encountering extensive trauma, directly and vicariously, acutely and cumulatively. PSP reported effects of such trauma on themselves and their families as including physical (e.g., headaches, back pain, cardiac arrest, digestive symptoms), psychological (e.g., crying, feeling unhappy, living in fear, experiencing anxiety and anger), and social or interpersonal impacts (e.g., social exclusion, avoidance, cynicism towards others). The effects on their families included marital breakdown and relationship dissolution with children, as well as increased familial stress, strain, a...
Frontiers in Public Health
The work of public safety personnel (PSP) such as police officers, firefighters, correctional officers, and paramedics, as well as other PSP, makes them vulnerable to psychological injuries, which can have profound impacts on their families and the communities they serve. A multitude of complex operational, organizational, and personal factors contribute to the mental health of PSP; however, to date the approach of the research community has been largely to explore the impacts of these factors separately or within single PSP professions. To date, PSP employers have predominantly focused on addressing the personal aspects of PSP mental health through resiliency and stress management interventions. However, the increasing number of psychological injuries among PSPs and the compounding stressors of the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrate a need for a new approach to the study of PSP mental health. The following paper discusses the importance of adopting a broader conceptual approach to the s...
Provincial Correctional Service Workers: The Prevalence of Mental Disorders
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Correctional service employees in Ontario, Canada (n = 1487) began an online survey available from 2017 to 2018 designed to assess the prevalence and correlates of mental health challenges. Participants who provided data for the current study (n = 1032) included provincial staff working in institutional wellness (e.g., nurses) (n = 71), training (e.g., program officers) (n = 26), governance (e.g., superintendents) (n = 82), correctional officers (n = 553), administration (e.g., record keeping) (n = 25), and probation officers (n = 144, parole officers). Correctional officers, workers in institutional administration and governance positions, and probation officers reported elevated risk for mental disorders, most notably posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and major depressive disorder. Among institutional correctional staff, 61.0% of governance employees, 59.0% of correctional officers, 43.7% of wellness staff, 50.0% of training staff, and 52.0% of administrative staff screened pos...
Brief Mental Health Disorder Screening Questionnaires and Use with Public Safety Personnel: A Review
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2021
Brief mental health disorder screening questionnaires (SQs) are used by psychiatrists, physicians, researchers, psychologists, and other mental health professionals and may provide an efficient method to guide clinicians to query symptom areas requiring further assessment. For example, annual screening has been used to help identify military personnel who may need help. Nearly half (44.5%) of Canadian public safety personnel (PSP) screen positive for one or more mental health disorder(s); as such, regular mental health screenings for PSP may be a valuable way to support mental health. The following review was conducted to (1) identify existing brief mental health disorder SQs; (2) review empirical evidence of the validity of identified SQs; (3) identify SQs validated within PSP populations; and (4) recommend appropriately validated brief screening questionnaires for five common mental health disorders (i.e., generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), major depressive depression (MDD), pani...
Journal of Criminal Justice, 2024
Purpose: Canadian correctional workers (CWs) experience substantial challenges with mental health, but prevalence estimates have been limited across provincial and territorial services. Methods: Participating CWs from all 13 provincial and territorial services (n = 3740) self-selected to complete an online mental health and well-being survey assessing sociodemographic characteristics and symptoms of several mental disorders. Participants worked as correctional officers, community operations (e.g., probation officers), institutional operations (e.g., program officers), community administrators (e.g., managers), institutional or regional headquarters administrators, or institutional management (e.g., superintendents). Results: Across Canada, participants screened positive for one or more mental disorders (57.9%), with several regional differences (ps < 0.05). Correctional officers reported more positive screens than other CWs (ps < 0.05). Years of service and being married were inversely related with mental health (ps < 0.05). Conclusions: The current results suggest provincial and territorial CWs report mental health challenges much more frequently than the diagnostic prevalence for the general public (10.1%) and need additional supports. Unexpectedly, there were absent elevations associated with data collected after the onset of COVID-19.