Along with police work comes serious health risks
In a landmark study of police officers in Buffalo, New York, results find an increased incidence of chronic disease and suicides.
The daily psychological stresses that police officers experience in their work put them at significantly higher risk than the general population for a host of long-term physical and mental health effects. That’s the overall finding of a major scientific study of the Buffalo Police Department called Buffalo Cardio-Metabolic Occupational Police Stress (BCOPS) conducted over five years by a University at Buffalo researcher.
The study was prompted by the assumption that the danger, high demands and exposure to human misery and death that police officers experience on the job contribute to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and other chronic health outcomes.
“This is one of the first police population-based studies to test the association between the stress of being a police officer and psychological and health outcomes,” says John Violanti, PhD, professor of social and preventive medicine in the UB School of Public Health and Health Professions, and principal investigator on the study, funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Volanti is a former New York State Trooper.
The research reveals connections between the daily stressors of police work and obesity, suicide, sleeplessness and cancer, as well as general health disparities between police officers and the general population.
The current findings, from a larger, cross-sectional study of four-hundred-sixty-four police officers, include:
— more than 25 percent of the officers had metabolic syndrome versus 18.7 percent of the general employed population
— female and male officers experiencing the highest level of self-reported stress were four- and six-times more likely to have poor sleep quality, respectively
— organizational stress and lack of support was associated with the metabolic syndrome in female but not male police officers
— overall, an elevated risk of Hodgkin’s lymphoma was observed relative to the general population. The risk of brain cancer, although only slightly elevated relative to the general population, was significantly increased with 30 years or more of police service.
Suicide rates were more than eight times higher in working officers than they were in officers who had retired or left the police force.
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