This study examined the impact that writing about personal emotions had on distress levels in police officers. A total of 67 police officers randomly assigned to either a writing intervention or a non-writing control group completed the study. Over a period of 4 work days the intervention group members wrote for 15 minutes a day about their strong emotions related to work or not, and what they planned to do about the emotions. All participants completed measures of stress, anxiety, and depression before and after the intervention. The results showed that the writing group experienced significantly lower levels of stress and anxiety post-intervention than the control group. The results suggest that writing about emotions can help reduce distress in police officers.
AlfordW.MalouffJ. M.OslandK. (in press). Written emotional expression as a coping method in child protective services officers. International Journal of Stress Management.
2.
AnshelM. H.RobertsonM.CaputiP. (1997). Sources of acute stress and their appraisals among Australian Police as a function of previous experience. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 70, 337–356.
3.
AntonyM. M.BielingP. J.CoxB. J.EnnsM. W.SwinsonR. P. (1998). Psychometric properties of the 42-item and 21-item versions of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales in clinical groups and a community sample. Psychological Assessment, 10, 176–181.
4.
BeehrT. A.JohnsonL. B.NievaR. (1995). Occupational stress: Coping of police and their spouses. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 16, 3–25.
5.
BeehrT. A.KingL. A.KingD. W. (1990). Social support and occupational stress: Talking to supervisors. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 36, 61–84.
6.
BrownJ. (1996). Occupational culture as a factor in the stress experiences of police officers. In LeishmanF.LovedayB.SavageS. (Eds.), Core issues in policing (2nd ed., pp. 249–263). New York: Pearson.
7.
BrownJ. M.CampbellE. A. (1990). Sources of occupational stress in the police. Work and Stress, 4, 305–318.
8.
BrownT. A.ChorpitaB. F.KorotitschW.BarlowD. H. (1997). Psychometric properties of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS) in clinical samples. Behaviour Research & Therapy, 35, 79–89.
9.
BurkeR. J. (1993). Work-family stress, conflict, coping and burnout in police officers. Psychological Reports, 65, 3–12.
10.
CohenJ. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
11.
CohenS.WillsT. A. (1985). Stress, social support, and the buffering hypothesis. Psychological Bulletin, 98, 310–357.
12.
EvansB. J.ComanG. J.StanleyR. O.BurrowsG. D. (1993). Police officers coping strategies: An Australian police survey. Stress Medicine, 9, 237–246.
13.
GoodmanA. M. (1990). A model for police officer burnout. Journal of Business and Psychology, 5, 85–99.
14.
HeN.ZhaoJ.ArchibaldC. A. (2002). Gender and police stress: The convergent and divergent impact of work environment, work-family conflict and stress coping mechanisms of female and male police officers. Policing, 25, 687–708.
15.
JohnO. P.DonahueE. M.KentleR. L. (1991). The Big Five Inventory — Versions 4a and 54. Berkeley, CA: University of California, Berkeley, Institute of Personality and Social Research.
16.
JohnO.SrivastavaS. (2001). The big five trait taxonomy: History, measurement and theoretical perspectives. In PervinL.JohnO. (Eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (2nd ed., pp. 102–138). New York: Guilford.
17.
Kennedy-MooreE.WatsonJ. C. (2001). How and when does emotional expression help?Review of General Psychology, 5, 187–212.
18.
KrohneH. W. (1996). Individual differences in coping. In ZeidnerM.EndlerN. S. (Eds.), Handbook of coping: Theory, research and applications (pp. 381–409). New York: Wiley.
19.
LovibondS. H.LovibondP. F. (1995a). Manual for the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (2nd ed.). Sydney: Psychology Foundation.
20.
LovibondP. F.LovibondS. H. (1995b). The structure of negative emotional states: Comparison of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS) with the Beck Depression and Anxiety Inventories. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 33, 335–343.
21.
LumbR. C.BreazealeR. (2003). Attitudes and community policing implementation: Developing strategies for durable organizational change. Policing and Society, 13, 91–106.
OrneM. T. (1962). On the social psychology of the psychological experiment: With particular reference to demand characteristics and their implications. American Psychologist, 17, 776–783.
24.
PennebakerJ. W. (2004). Writing to heal: A guided journey for recovering from trauma and emotional upheaval. Oakland: New Harbinger.
25.
PennebakerJ. W.SeagalJ. D. (1999). Forming a story: The health benefits of narrative. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 55, 1243–1254.
26.
RichmondR.WodakA.KehoeL.HeatherN. (1998). How healthy are the police? A survey of life-style factors. Addiction, 93, 1729–1737.
27.
SewellJ. D. (1983). The development of a critical life events scale for law enforcement. Journal of Police Science and Administration, 11, 109–116.
28.
SloanD. M.MarxB. P. (2004). A closer examination of the structured writing disclosure. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 72, 165–175.
29.
SmythJ. M. (1998). Written emotional expression: Effect sizes, outcome types and moderating variables. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 66, 174–184.
30.
StevensD. J. (1999). Police officer stress. Law and Order, 47, 77–81.
31.
StinchcombJ. B. (2004). Searching for stress in all the wrong places: Combating chronic organizational stressors in policing. Police Practice and Research, 5, 259–277.
32.
TabachnickB. G.FidellL. S. (2001). Using multivariate statistics (4th ed.). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
33.
van der KlinkJ. J. L.BlonkR. W. B.ScheneA. H.DijkF. J. H. (2001). The benefits of interventions for work related stress. American Journal of Public Health, 81, 270–276.
34.
ViolantiJ. M.AronF. (1993). Sources of police stressors, job attitudes and psychological distress. Psychological Reports, 72, 899–904.
35.
ViolantiJ. M.MarshallJ. R.HoweB. H. (1985). Stress, coping and alcohol use: The police connection. Journal of Police Science and Administration, 13, 106–110.
36.
WesterlinkJ. (1990). Stress and coping mechanisms in young police officers. Australian Police Journal, 44, 109–113.
37.
ZellarsK. L.PerreweP. L. (1997). Affective personality and the content of emotional social support: Coping in organizations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86, 459–467.
