Occupational medicine for policing

Inevitable Loss and Prolonged Grief in Police Work: An Unexplored Topic

The present manuscript presents foundational constructs related to death and loss (i.e., grief, bereavement, prolonged grief) providing empirical findings from recent research on the impact of death and loss on police officers’ health, behavior, and overall functioning. Police officers are routinely exposed to death. In many instances, officers’ contact with decedents includes, among others, victims of accidents, catastrophes, or violent crimes and witnessing the intense emotional suffering of relatives of the deceased. Additionally, it is not uncommon for officers to experience the loss of fellow officers from on-duty deaths and permanent, career-ending injuries. Simultaneously, like everyone, police officers have to cope with deaths of loved ones in their personal lives. The result is that officers’ health and well-being are likely compromised because of the systematic exposure to on- and off-duty deaths. In this perspective paper, death and loss in law enforcement are explored in an attempt to raise awareness and increase attention to this area of police work. In addition, the authors list a number of prophylactic intervention strategies that would support officers cope with the impact of loss and death and promote their own resilience.

Associations of Depressive Symptoms and Brachial Artery Reactivity among Police Officers

Objectives

Mental health has been shown to be linked with certain underlying physiological mechanisms. The objective of this cross sectional study was to investigate the relationship between depressive symptoms and brachial artery reactivity (BAR) in an understudied population: police officers.

Methods

Participants were 351 police officers who were clinically examined in the Buffalo Cardio-Metabolic Police Stress (BCOPS) study. BAR was performed using standard B-Mode ultrasound procedures. Depressive symptoms were measured using the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression (CES-D) scale. Mean values of the difference between the baseline and maximum diameters of the brachial artery were determined across three categories of CES-D score using the analysis of variance and the analysis of covariance. p-values for linear trends were obtained from linear regression models.

Results

The mean age (± standard deviation) of all officers was 40.9 ± 7.2 years. Women had a slightly higher mean CES-D score than men (8.9 ± 8.9 vs. 7.4 ± 6.4) and a slightly higher percentage increase of BAR than men (6.90 vs. 5.26%). Smoking status significantly modified the associations between depressive symptoms and BAR. Among current smokers, mean absolute values of BAR significantly decreased as depressive symptoms increased after adjustment for age, gender, race/ethnicity, hypertension, and diabetes; the multivariate-adjusted p-values were 0.033 (absolute) and 0.040 (%). Associations between depressive symptoms and BAR were not statistically significant among former smokers or never smokers.

Conclusion

Depressive symptoms were inversely associated with BAR among police officers who were current smokers and together may be considered a risk factor for cardiovascular disease among police officers. Further prospective research is warranted.

Religious officials' knowledge, attitude, and behavior towards smoking and the new tobacco law in Kahramanmaras, Turkey

Background

Tobacco control effort should be first started in people that are looked upon as role models for the general population. We aimed to determine the knowledge, attitude, and behavior of religious officials towards smoking and the new tobacco law.

Method

The study group was comprised of 492 Imams and 149 Quran course instructors working in Kahramanmaras city of Turkey, 641 religious officials in total, and our survey form was applied on 406 (63.3%) of those religious officials who agreed to participate in the study.

Results

Twenty-eight (6.9%) participants were current smokers and 35 (8.6%) were ex-smokers. 99.8% of the religious officials believed that smoking was harmful and/or prohibited in terms of religion. While 43.6% respondents thought smoking was "haram" (forbidden by Islam), 56.2% believed it was "makruh" (something regarded as reprehensible, though not forbidden by God according to Islam). 85.2% of the participants were aware of the recent tobacco law. 55.5% of the respondents, who were aware of the recent tobacco law, evaluated their knowledge level on the law as adequate, whereas 44.5% evaluated it as inadequate 92.4% of the participants noted that religious officials should play active roles in tobacco control effort.

Conclusion

Smoking rate among religious officials is much lower than that of general public. In order to help religious officials to take a more active role on this issue, they should be trained on the subject and appropriate platforms should be established.