Ann Occup Environ Med.  2016 ;28(1):58. 10.1186/s40557-016-0145-9.

Self-resilience as a protective factor against development of post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms in police officers

• Lee JK
• Choi HG
• Kim JY
• Nam J
• Kang HT
• Koh SB
• Oh SS

• KMID: 2370938
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1186/s40557-016-0145-9

Abstract

BACKGROUND
This study was conducted to check whether self-resilience, one of the characteristics known to affect the occurrence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms after experiencing traumatic events, could serve as a protective factor for police officers whose occupational factors are corrected.
METHODS
We conducted a cross-sectional study in which 112 male police officers in Gangwon Province participated. They visited the Wonju Severance Christian Hospital Occupational Environment Center for medical check-ups from June to December 2015. Their general characteristics were identified using structured questionnaires, and they were asked to fill in the Korean Occupational Stress Scale-Short Form (KOSS-SF). Further, the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression Scale (CES-D), Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale-Korean (CD-RI-K), and Impact of Event Scale-Revised-Korean version (IES-R-K) were used to evaluate their job stress, depression, self-resilience, and PTSD symptoms. Logistic regression analysis was conducted to correct their personal, occupational, and psychological factors to analyze the relationship between self-resilience and PTSD symptoms.
RESULTS
Among 112 respondents who experienced a traumatic event, those with low self-resilience had significantly higher rate of PTSD symptoms than those with high self-resilience even after correcting for the covariate of general, occupational, and psychological characteristics (odds ratio [OR] 3.51; 95 % CI: 1.06-19.23).
CONCLUSIONS
Despite several limitations, these results suggest that a high degree of self-resilience may protect police officers from critical incident-related PTSD symptoms.

Keyword

Keywords; Police officer; Post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms; Job stress; Resilience

MeSH Terms

Cross-Sectional Studies
Depression
Gangwon-do
Humans
Logistic Models
Male
Police*
Protective Factors*
Psychology
Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic*
Surveys and Questionnaires