Policing the mind
Mon, 08 Oct 2012 16:08:00 BST
Researcher Sajida Naz has investigated how police forces respond to the traumas their officers face
DAY in day out, police officers are subjected to distressing sights and scenes. How do they cope? And when they suffer trauma, how much support can they count on?
At the University of Huddersfield, researcher Sajida Naz (featured also in the video), has been probing the reactions of police to potentially traumatic experiences. Her project has dealt in equal measure with the UK and with her native Pakistan. Now she has begun to relay her findings.
“Trauma can manifest itself in three ways – physical, psychological and behavioural,” she says. Panic attacks, anxiety and depression can afflict officers and the reaction to a distressing incident can sometimes be delayed by several days or even months.
During her research, she interviewed police in both Pakistan and England – including several senior, highly-experienced West Yorkshire officers. The episodes continually cited as traumatic included crimes in which children were the victims, plus road traffic accidents and encounters with dead bodies or dealing with body parts.
Often, Sajida found the pressure of the job during an investigation did not allow police officers sufficient time to analyse the psychological effect of disturbing experiences.
“Research shows that people who work in conditions that expose them to trauma can develop psychological conditions that affect their professional and social lives if they are not dealt with properly,” says Sajida.
But she found that in Britain, police forces were adopting coping strategies that included self-help techniques and occupational health units plus consultations with psychologists and psychiatrists.
So far, this is not the case in Pakistan, where mental health issues are still surrounded by considerable taboos. Instead, strong religious beliefs were among the elements that helped officers to cope, although Pakistani police authorities were beginning to move towards psychological assessment of officers.
Despite developments such as the use of occupational health units in the UK, however, many officers felt impelled to put a brave face on things, not least because they feared their jobs were at stake, said Sajida.
PhD Scholarship
Born in Rawalpindi, she obtained an MSc in Behavioural Science at Fatima Jinnah Women University, where she has also taught and conducted research. Developing her interest in police officers and trauma, she obtained a scholarship from the University of Huddersfield that enabled her to extend her PhD research to the UK. She also received an American Psychological Foundation Frances M. Culbertson Grant, providing her with funds for travel.
Based in the University of Huddersfield’s School of Human and Health Sciences, Sajida has now completed her thesis and begun to disseminate her research in articles and papers. For example, she gave a presentation at the 2012 conference of PsyPAG, the national organisation for psychology postgraduates.
She was glad to be given the opportunity to extend her work to the UK.
“There is very good infrastructure here and the British police force is obviously one of the best in the world, but despite all the facilities I could see that there are debates around mental health so I was quite interested to look and compare the situation with Pakistan.”
Sajida will return to take a lecturing position at Fatima Jinnah, but is keen to keep up links with the University of Huddersfield and develop further research collaborations.
