Self-Reported Coping Strategies for Managing Work-Related Stress among Public Safety Personnel

Date
2022-02-18
Authors
Anderson, Gregory, S.
Ricciardelli, Rosemary
Tam-Seto, Linna
Giwa, Sulaimon
Carleton, R. Nicholas
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
Abstract

Public safety personnel (PSP) experience a disproportionately high number of on-the-job stressors compared to the general population. PSP develop self-initiated actions, or coping strategies, that either confront the situation (approach strategies) or avoid the situation (avoidance strategies) to reduce the impact of stressors on their well-being. Understanding how PSP cope with stress is critical to ensuring their safety and that of the public. In the current study, we examined the coping strategies of PSP (n = 828 in the total sample). Participants managed their experiences of occupational stress or distress using three primary approach coping strategies: education (learning about mental illness and their causes), self-reliance (processes of self-reflection), and treatment (pharmaceutical, psychotherapy) that were considered adaptive. Results demonstrate PSP used multiple coping strategies simultaneously to deal with occupational stress. PSP who reported doing better tended to attribute their success to treatment, specifically psychotherapy, either alone or in combination with other interventions, and almost always emphasizing important supports from co-workers, families, and friends. Changing workplace culture could help to de-pathologize the effects of stress reactions being perceived as individual “failings”.

Description
© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Keywords
coping, public safety personnel, stress, mental health, injury
Citation
Anderson, G. S., Ricciardelli, R., Tam-Seto, L., Giwa, S., & Carleton, R. N. (2022). Self-reported coping strategies for managing work-related stress among public safety personnel. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(4), 2355. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19042355