Fostering resilience among police

This is the publisher's version of an article published by Ubrica Global Journal System.Police officers are often mandated to respond to extremely stressful and potentially traumatic situations over the course of their careers (Andersen, Papazoglou, Koskelainen, & Nyman, 2015). Research has shown that occupational stress and trauma exposure has a negative impact on police officers’ health and wellness (Violanti et al., 2005). Police officers are expected to respond to critical incidents and resolve challenging situations effectively despite routine exposure to severe stress. Even though local and national governments invest a vast amount of money in police tactical training and equipment, resilience building has not been a major component of police training. This paper aims to open a dialogue about the importance of mental preparedness training as a means of enhancing police resilience in the line of duty. The authors discuss the pioneering work of scholars (e.g., Andersen et al., 2015; Arnetz et al., 2013) who developed research initiatives to facilitate mental preparedness among police officers. Clinical and police training applications of the aforementioned research work, as well as future directions of such outcomes are discussed