Police Occupational Stress And Its Influencing Factors

This research is to provide a study of the police's occupational stress on the basis of the investigation of the police's mental health. It studies the causes and the level of the police's occupational stress, analyzes the subjective and objective factors that influence the police's occupational stress, and focuses on the effects of the police's mental health, coping strategy and social support on their occupational stress. The research intends to describe the relationships between the police's occupational stress and these factors and to build a theoretical model of the police's occupational stress. This research also tries to find out the probabilities to reduce the police's occupational stress and to provide some information and suggestion to the authorities for seting up some counseling centers, making the policemen at the grass-roots level to alleviate their occupational stress and improve their mental health.In this research, questionnaires are used to study the current situation of the police's mental health, the level and causes of their occupational stress, coping strategies and social support. It is found that the level of the police's mental health is close to the normal, with high somatization and low interpersonal sensitivity. Secondly, the police's occupational stress is obvious, the male police higher than the female. The occupational stress varies distinctively between types of the police, criminal police the highest and office police the lowest. Thirdly, the causes of the police's occupational stress originates from two categories. One is similar to the stressors of other occupations, thus called general occupation stressors, which include task-related stressors and organizational stressors. Task-related stressors can be further divided into positive and negative stressors by their nature. The other causes belongs to the stressors that are specific to the police, thus called occupation specific stressors, which include police worries stressors and police specific stressors. Fourthly, coping strategy has an effect on the police's occupational stress. Solving the problem is a common strategy used by the policemen. However, it is not found that a certain strategy is directly related to high or low stress. Therefore, it is suggested that various coping strategies be selected according to the individual. Lastly, social support, especially subjective support, distinctively alleviates the police's occupational stress. The social support varies in types of police and the social support for criminal police is relatively low.Based on the result of the research, some suggestions are served: first, as for the individual police, it is necessary to disseminate the knowledge about mental health and occupational stress to improve their psychological quality. Secondly, as to the police institution, it is important to establish the counseling clinic or health center for the guide of mental health and training to promote the application of psychology in a professional way. Thirdly, concerning all levels of the society, it is vital to build up social support network to intensify the social support for the police.