‘Who’s Responsibility?’

‘Who’s Responsibility?’ Resilience... SJ Lennie

I will… Take you through theory of Emotional Labour, PTSD and Dissociation Explore Ph.D findings What does this mean? What should we do?

Resilience… …Stigma Rhetoric… …Reality

Feeling & Display RulesAlienation & Emotional Dissonance Prof. Arlie Hochschild Emotional Labour

A form of psychological avoidance: ‘the splitting off from awareness, thoughts, feelings, or memories’ (Aaron, 2000:439). Dissociation

Dissociation: Avoidant Coping ‘officers who employ such defences are more likely than those who acknowledge the effect of stressors to develop subsequent psychological or psychiatric difficulties. Conversely, those who engage in the difficult and challenging task of confronting the thoughts and feelings that are a by-product of some aspects of police work can expect healthier outcomes’(Aaron, 2000:446).

Early psychological and social support moderates the complexity and debilitating nature of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder(Stephens and Long, 1999 & 2000; Heffrena and Hausdorf, 2016).

‘1 in 5 police officers and staff with PTSD… … over two-thirds not aware.’ Dr Jess Miller

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders fifth edition (DSM-5) identifies dissociative disorders as:‘a disruption of and/or discontinuity in the normal integration of consciousness, memory, identity, emotion, perception, body representation, motor control, and behaviour’(American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Dissociation & PTSD

“…I know I have feelings but I don’t feel them…”Symptomology: Emotional and physical numbing Sense of lack of agency Feeling robotic presenting as a robotic demeanorHypo-emotionality with othersHypo-reactivity to emotional stimuli Depersonalisation & Derealisation

Peritraumatic - at time of eventGeneralised - prior to eventPersistent - post event Dissociation & Trauma

‘Dissociative PTSD can reduce treatment effectiveness due to lack of emotional engagement and emotional numbing, also found to block emotional learning.’ (Resick et al., 2012)

Hypothesis: Emotional Labour increases the risk of PTSD symptomology in police officers through increased peritraumatic, persistent and generalised dissociation.

From the Horse’s Mouth… An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of interviews with serving and ex-officers.

Discrepancy between Rhetoric and Reality • More awareness of MH in job, but still feel unable to express emotions • Officers think they are more open but then talk of suppressing and masking • Mental well-being and health not supported by actions of SLT • Officer well-being secondary to investigation and public perception • Significant consequences to expressing emotion or MH matters

‘I am very embarrassed, about PTSD, very embarrassed, because it is a weakness isn’t it?’‘They just go “ring CIC” but it takes me six weeks to get to see someone, I can’t go to occy health because there isn’t any spots, and I have got to go through an assessment process.’‘I think that it is still very much frowned upon to have those discussions.’‘When I am out with other people, I am very guarded as to how I might react to something… it is easier just to deal with it, sort of cold if you like.’

Day after terrorist attack:‘They just didn’t get it, they didn’t get the emotions that everyone was going through. There was a full expectation that we would just come back in as if nothing had happened and just carry on.’

The Role of the Supervisor.

‘I can’t feel my face, I haven’t slept all night, I feel like someone has put a rope around my chest and is pulling tight on it, I can’t feel my hands and she just went “well it is your choice to be at work” and she sent me an email effectively confirming our conversation.’

‘we had been doing first aid on the person that got stabbed and we were covered in his blood and we were left on a crime scene for eight hours. Covered in his blood and no supervisor thought it was a good idea to swap us out… We were watching a guy die and then being left on the crime scene covered in blood.’

Consequences & Trust • Fear of being seen as weak by supervisors and senior leaders • Being viewed by peers as unpredictable and unreliable • Expressing distress or seeking support signals inappropriateness for role • Expressing distress or seeking support signals inappropriateness for promotion • Opening up about mental ill-health halts careerHelp seeking behaviour leads to isolation • Officers do not trust other officers around them with their true feelings • Officers learn to supress true emotions to avoid isolation and/or being discredited

‘I think that anyone showing any sort of emotions is a danger to them…you can’t be trusted… you might do something different.’‘You can’t be honest here, because it will just wreck your career...’‘You have to suppress it to survive.’‘these things are taken as a sign that you are not coping... I was worried that people would think that I couldn’t do my job.’‘I learned how to better suppress the heart on the sleeve side of things.’

‘The worst thing that you can be told is - if you don’t like it, go and do something else. But I don’t want to do anything else, I love what I do, which is why I feel the way that I do..’.

Self-Sacrifice and Worthlessness. • Strong sense of vocation and high work ethic, placing organisation before themselves • Isolated in their work ethic, physically and culturally • Officers feel their needs are secondary to that of the organisation/investigation/public • The public believe that officers lives are secondary to their work • Officers feel dehumanised by the organisation and the public they work for – and try to live up to this ‘ideal’ • There is no time between jobs to process emotions • Single crewing increases sense of isolation and loss of belonging

‘I have always got on with things and that is partly why we have come to where we are now, because people who don’t do things never seem to have mental health problems.’‘I was not well for a long time, but you don’t do anything about it.’‘it takes a massive chunk out of you, but you don’t realise it at the time, you do it because it is the right thing.’

‘You could be really, really struggling with a four handed RTC and there is nothing there, you are just expected to get on with it, you have left the job, told dispatch that you have gone… and you are ready for the next job and it is right, can you go to this shoplifter detained, it is like yesterdays newspaper, it is just gone, it is weird, and these are the type of things that stay with you.’

‘We have depersonalised that police officer and saying - you are not a victim having seen that. It is like saying that your brain is physically different to other peoples.’ ‘It is really odd isn’t it, the job, it tells us that we have to be compassionate to our victims, yet we don’t show compassion to ourselves.’

Relationships • There is no sense of police family – everyone for themselves • Peer relationships do not have time to develop to point of trust due to lack of time together • Supervisors are not trusted or are unempathetic and enforce feeling rules of emotional suppression • Teams are disparate as they rarely spend time together, this has eroded trust • Family members expect officers to be less emotionally affected by family events • Officers protect family members from the emotional aspects of work • Officers are never truly open about their emotions with their family

‘They just go out, or come in all single crewed, don’t see their colleagues for ages and then - so how are they going to develop that relationship if they don’t see each other? You don’t get to go to jobs together.’ ‘I think technology has been really great for policing but has also contributed to this. You get a bobby booking on at a station, they get in a car they have their PDA, they have no need to go into a police station, they might never see another colleague all day, deal with whatever, then go home and it could be like that for a week of shifts.’

‘You have seen it sort of dismantled as well of any sort of, sense of corps belonging with the closure of police training schools…you felt that you were a collective part of something… there was a community of purpose...’‘people didn’t live in little communities and they didn’t go to the pub and those sorts of things and a lot of that was taken from underneath you.’‘There is not that sort of environment, that sort of safe decompression environment where people who serve and work together can actually go and relax together and actually informally debrief…’

‘yeah, you can’t be yourself… it is a lonely place to be, it is a very lonely place to be.’‘If you are somebody who is quite overtly emotional and tends to wear your heart on your sleeves, you make the tactical mistake of actually unloading to the wrong person and if you do, you have had it.’‘there is that whole element of trust, you are worrying about who you are letting in, who you are showing it to.’

‘we did have a death in the family recently… it is very true that there is an expectation because of what you used to do for a living that you are going to be that stoic type figure.’‘I find myself thinking I know that my reactions are not normal… even as my dad died… I just end up switching into police mode and just get on with it…’

Dissociation and Depersonalisation – A Culture

Dissociation and Depersonalisation cont.

‘Suck it up!’ ‘response teams because they are understaffed, they, you kind of, you have to be all right, you have to push on to the next one, and the next one to the next one, you don’t have time to sit there and think… you kind of have to just suck it up and move onto the next one, you are like the walking wounded…that eleven hours between shifts goes very quickly and then you are back in and having to do it all over again…’

‘dissociation, I think that is for a lot of the time, for me anyway, it is a conscious choice, so when I go to scenes or anything like that, if it is particularly bad, I will try and not, switch off that bit of my brain…’‘it was not being in myself, viewing things from a different angle, I didn’t like that at all.’

‘I don’t sleep very well, I end up, I can sit awake at night, I don’t talk very often…I just shut down or don’t talk at all, just sit in a corner…’‘I didn’t discuss things at home either, just because there was so much going on, it was easier to just put it in a box at the end of the day.’

‘you get that constant, constant flow where eventually the job actually desensitises you itself, it unintentionally desensitises you, you can’t cope otherwise…I lost the ability to feel emotions for years.’‘the best way not to struggle with it was to try and push it away…’ ‘I had lost my ability to be scared, I used to go gung-ho into situations, okay I came out unscathed, but I had this no fear, which suited the job.’

‘I would try and think – how can I stop myself from feeling so anxious and bad about it… so you are trying to turn yourself into a numb thing for that period.’ ‘there is a lot of feeling of numbness, just nothing there at times, just nothing.’

‘you become two people, you become that policeman on duty whose job is to do what he is being paid for, and then the second person is the man that goes home to wife and kids, and you know the wife says to the husband – how was the shift? It was fine, usual garbage but it was fine. What he doesn’t say is that there was a five-car collision the driver was drunk…’

What officers want.. ‘I think that having the environment is everything and you know, we don’t have, we don’t even have sufficient canteens, so if you haven’t got that operational space, quiet space, take them out...give that officer that time, but I think that that is a major failing, because if we don’t show value, if we don’t show physically, you know, that we are looking after our officers, that for me is a major organisational failing, because, if you don’t invest in people, you know, at their most vulnerable...’

A sense of family.A feeling of belonging.An understanding of acceptance and worth.

‘I think that the team and the family is everything in the force, everything else has been eroded and if you have got nothing else if you have got the team together and they gel well, then you know, at least you have got something, and I am dreading the period now where, at the station for example, when a custody alarm goes off, or an assistance shout comes out and you don’t see running to vehicles anymore and that scares me.’ ‘I think that we need to fight for some police family, police community, that idea that, people were talking earlier that we joined the police to become part of the police family, but actually the reality of it is...’

What now..

Authenticity Purpose Adaptability Self Care Support Energy Networks Resilience @ Work Kathryn McEwenOrganisational Psychologist

‘Who’s Responsibility?’