Demographic and cognitive risk factors for police mental disorder symptoms

Date
2019-12-17
Authors
Korol, Stephanie
Vig, Kelsey, D.
Teale Sapach, Michelle, J. N.
Asmundson, Gordon, J. G.
Carleton, R. Nicholas
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Abstract

The current study was designed to assess whether cognitive risk factors (i.e. anxiety sensitivity (AS), intolerance of uncertainty (IU)) explained variance in mental disorder symptoms in Canadian police officers beyond variance explained by demographic variables (i.e. sex, marital status, education, years of service). Police participants (708 men; 271 women) completed measures assessing posttraumatic stress disorder, panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, IU and AS. Multivariate analysis of variance demonstrated that only main effects of sex were significant for all symptom variables, except SAD. Hierarchical multiple regressions demonstrated that AS and IU accounted for greater variance than sex on all mental disorder symptom measures, which suggests that cognitive risk factors explain more variance in mental disorder symptoms than sex. Efforts to reduce AS and IU may be beneficial for improving police mental health.

Description
Copyright © The Author(s) 2019. Published by SAGE. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).
Keywords
Police officers, risk factors, anxiety sensitivity, intolerance of uncertainty, mental disorder symptoms
Citation
Korol, S., Vig, K. D., Teale Sapach M. J. N., & Carleton, R. N. (2019). Demographic and cognitive risk factors for police mental disorder symptoms. The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032258X19894619