It astounds me how deeply confused political messaging around law enforcement can be. I am not a cop and never have been, but I do teach criminal law at the University of Iowa. As an informed outsider with a complementary background, I feel I have a unique perspective on how mental health is viewed both in and out of the law enforcement community.
Each semester, I invite a police officer into my classroom to give a guest lecture, followed by a Q&A session. During one such session, a student asked, “What do you and your fellow officers think about body cams?” Those in attendance were shocked at the reply: “I really like body cams, and so does everyone I know. The footage can clear up how an interaction actually went down.” The students were equally shocked when a different officer told them she likes working alongside mental health co-responders — explaining that most cops just don’t have the training to intervene effectively with people experiencing a mental health episode.
Perception vs. Reality
You can’t really blame the students (or the general public) for their surprise. Most people only know what they hear from politicians, media outlets and reform advocates — many of whom tell a very different story: “Cops think bodycams are invasive and that co-responders are stepping on their turf.” When the mismatch between what people believe and what cops actually experience is this great, everyone loses. We miss opportunities to collaborate on goals practically everyone shares, like more transparency in arrests and more effective responses to people in psychological distress.
Here’s another unfortunate mismatch: Attitudes about police mental health. One thing that’s overlooked by most of the messaging on criminal justice reform is that police across the country are suffering. Police work is tough. It puts law enforcement officers in daily contact with the darker side of humanity. As one officer put it to me, “No one ever talks about how many dead people you see.” Anyone would need space to process those experiences, but cops’ grueling work schedule leaves little time for self-care.
Meanwhile, police face a constant barrage of negative sentiment, often from the same people they’re trying to protect. Eventually, all of this takes a toll. Police experience some of the highest rates of suicide, PTSD, substance abuse and marital dysfunction of any profession.
Ignoring (or Denying) the Problem
None of this is new, but there’s a tendency both in and out of the force to push police wellness to the back of our minds. For critics of the police, acknowledging that police are suffering requires a measure of empathy that can be in short supply. For the police themselves, concern about wellness can get confused with weakness, and that’s not what police are about. Experience shows us a pervasive stigma against seeking help for mental health within the law enforcement community, though this is beginning to change.
Improving police mental health should be a goal all sides can agree on. On one hand, there are reformers who want to reduce unnecessary police violence. There are lots of reasons police interactions can take a turn for the worse, but the poor state of police wellness is an important factor that few talk about. No one who’s overworked, sleep-deprived and antagonized will be able to respond with calm, considered judgment 100% of the time. It doesn’t help that PTSD (which is far more prevalent in police than in the general population) can cause people to misperceive threats in their environment. Anyone who’s serious about addressing unnecessary police violence needs to take a close look at police wellness.
On the other hand, the police themselves should also care about their own mental health. This doesn’t come naturally to every officer. After all, the police are trained to put the safety of others over their own. Some officers, particularly those who joined the force in an earlier decade, may not like talking about mental health at all. But even they can and should get behind interventions that would improve general wellness (and, incidentally, mental health too).
I’m talking about things like more respect for time off, less overtime, more attention to physical fitness, more meaningful support after critical incidents and better confidential resources for addressing substance abuse. Any of these measures would make officers’ lives better, both physically and mentally, and give them time (whether with family, in the gym or on vacation) to manage the cumulative stress that comes with the job.
Local quality-of-life interventions like those I just suggested are important, but sustained progress on police mental health will require a more coordinated, nationwide effort. Here are three proactive efforts we should be talking about.
1. A Nationwide Database on Police Mental Health
Even though police are more likely to die by suicide than in the line of duty, no one actually knows how many officers take their own lives each year. The federal government has made some half-hearted attempts to collect this information, but their database only covers one in every 10 incidents.
In fact, most outsiders know shockingly little about police psychology at all, including which disorders are most prevalent, where they are most likely to appear, what causes them, how to prevent them and what treatments are most effective. While big strides have been made within the law enforcement community to improve attitudes about and treatment of mental health issues for both sworn and non-sworn employees, these developments aren’t readily understood or acknowledged by the general public. It’s far past time for our nation’s leaders to make a serious commitment to compiling data from local departments about how their officers are doing.
2. Expanded Crisis Intervention Team Training
I’ve spoken a lot with officers from my local police department in Iowa City about police wellness. It’s clear the department is doing something right, and it started by focusing on the wellness of others. ICPD was an early adopter of crisis intervention team (CIT) training, which educates officers about mental health so that they can be more effective when interacting with civilians in crisis. It works, and that’s why the officers liked it.
As CIT training became better integrated into the department, something interesting started to happen. Officers who went through the training became more perceptive of the problems faced by themselves and their peers. Becoming more aware of the mental health challenges of others made them more capable of recognizing and confronting their own needs. As one officer told me, “It started to ‘normalize’ conversations about ‘how are you doing.’” They became better and more supportive peers. The benefits of CIT training came full circle when police started to apply what they had learned to themselves as well. “This stuff will change your life if you allow it,” one officer told me. Because CIT training focuses on effectiveness in the field, it can get even reluctant officers to start thinking about issues of mental wellness that are important at home, too.
3. More Constructive Language for Addressing Problems in Policing
There’s a lot of toxic rhetoric about law enforcement. Of course, police aren’t perfect. When people use hateful language, though, they often don’t realize that they may be contributing to the problem.
Police departments across the nation face a staffing crisis — cops are quitting and there aren’t enough new recruits to replace them. A huge factor behind this is the shift in public attitudes towards police. What drives most cops is the desire to help people, but it’s hard to see yourself as a helper when you’re constantly bombarded with hateful language.
When demoralized cops leave the force, the problems that concern police critics only get worse. Recruiting challenges force departments to lower their standards. And staffing shortages force the cops who remain to work longer and harder to pick up the slack. None of this helps police become the heroes they aspire to be or the protectors the public deserves.
Further Work Is Needed
I recently published a much more detailed article in the Iowa Law Review called “Police Mental Health.” Check it out for more facts, ideas and detailed interviews with cops from the Iowa City Police Department. In this piece, I detail a five-step solution to improving the mental health of law enforcement professionals:
- Remove barriers to seeking help.
- Double down on crisis intervention and co-response.
- Improve discourse around policing.
- Collect data about police mental health and violence.
- Adopt more balanced responses to mental illness.
As I note in the conclusion of that article, “It is past time to intervene. Our collective concern about police violence demands it.” It’s high time for all sides to realize that they should care about police mental health. Maybe then we can start collaborating on how to improve police wellness.
