Psychological Effects of Being A Police Officer Research Paper

Psychological Effects of Being A Police Officer - Research Paper Example For one to be a police officer, he has to go through thorough training to prepare him for the job at hand. Law enforcement is a career field in which one must not only be physically strong but also mentally because the psychological effects can have the ability to damage one’s mental well being, personal life, and career performance. Below is an overview of the effects of police work on their mental, personal and career lives. Police officers are exposed to episodes of violence, deception and victimization throughout most of their careers. The impact of having to deal with these issues can weigh very heavily on their mental well being (Villiers 25). Policemen as human and although they may have undergone training to enable them to deal with stressors that accompany their work, they can sometimes succumb to the pressure. Some of the events that may have detrimental effects to the mental well being o a police officer include witnessing the death of a colleague or being involved in a shootout (Paton 85). These incidences may be traumatic for the officer and they may affect his mental abilities and concentration at work and at home. In some cases police officers may have suicidal tendencies. This is the extreme mental effects that the work of policing can have on an officer. Due to the stress caused by certain experiences while on the job, some policemen have tried and others succeeded in committing suicide (90). These suicidal tendencies are caused by the officers not being able to reconcile with a situation that they found themselves in. in this case, the brain cannot fully deal with a certain situation and the resulting stress becomes too much for the officer who decides that he would rather end his life than continue being faced by the same problem everyday (Villiers 32). Police officers, like everyone else in the society have their own private lives. Many of them have families that they care about. One of the requirements