How to Conduct Resilience Workshops: A Comprehensive Guide for Enhancing Police Officer Wellbeing

Police officers confront traumatic events and chronic stress daily, putting them at high risk for mental health issues like PTSD, depression, and anxiety. While many departments offer counseling services to treat officers already struggling, a critical yet underutilized approach is building resilience before problems occur through workshops and training.

Our recent survey found 37% of government employers provide resilience workshops focused on coping strategies for stress and anxiety. This outpaces the 28% average across industries (1). While it is encouraging to see some police agencies taking action, all departments would benefit from prioritizing resilience training to protect the wellbeing of our officers before challenges arise.

The Toll of Trauma Exposure on Police Mental Health

The nature of police work inevitably exposes officers to trauma that can profoundly impact their mental health over the course of a career. On average, studies show police officers experience 188 critical incidents over 25 years on the force (2). These incidents can range from responding to homicides, suicides, fatal car accidents, child deaths, and mass casualties.

This constant trauma exposure increases the risk for several mental health conditions compared to civilians:

• PTSD: Estimated to impact 7-19% of officers vs 3.5% of general public (3)
• Depression: Affects around 11% of police vs 5% of public (4)
• Anxiety: Impacts around 20% of officers vs 18% of public (5)

In addition to responding to critical incidents, police also face the daily grind of organizational stressors like excessive paperwork, staff shortages, public criticism, and inconsistent leadership. The cumulative toll of operational and organizational stress leads to concerning rates of burnout, alcoholism, and suicide among officers (6).

While many factors drive poor officer wellbeing, one area police leaders can directly impact is beefing up training on resilience, which can significantly mitigate the damage from chronic stress.

What is Resilience?

Resilience refers to one’s ability to successfully adapt and cope when faced with adversity, trauma, tragedy, or significant stress (7). Resilience enables us to “bounce back” faster and return to our baseline level of functioning after hardship.

We are not born with a predetermined level of resilience. Several factors influence resilience capacity, many of which we can change and strengthen. These include:

• Social support system
• Self-care behaviors
• Sense of purpose/meaning
• Adaptability
• Physical health
• Emotional regulation
• Help-seeking tendency
• Positive thinking patterns

The great news is resilience can be taught and nurtured. While police officers will likely experience trauma on the job throughout their careers, they do not have to suffer long-term mental health consequences if we build their resilience skills early on.

How Resilience Training Helps Police

Resilience training aims to equip officers with the coping mechanisms and healthy response patterns they need to minimize the damage from chronic stress. Training often incorporates components like:

Mindfulness practices: Mindfulness meditation and breathwork help officers manage emotions, reduce reactivity, and process trauma. For example, a study of 31 police found those trained in mindfulness were less stressed, anxious, and depressed (8).

Reframing techniques: Learning to reframe situations in less threatening ways increases adaptability and positive thinking associated with resilience.

Emotional regulation: Training officers to recognize and constructively manage their emotions helps prevent burnout and improves social interactions.

Healthy self-care: Teaching good self-care habits like proper sleep, diet, exercise, and relaxation boosts overall wellbeing.

Realistic optimism: Fostering realistic optimism and protecting against cynicism improves resilience.

Peer support: Peer teams teach officers how to support one another after traumatic events to facilitate recovery.

Crisis intervention: Officers learn how to directly support community members and each other during crises to foster their own resilience when helping others.

Coping strategies for stress: Workshops teach officers adaptive methods like focused breathing, humor, cognitive restructuring, and muscle relaxation to mitigate stress.

Destigmatizing treatment: Training covers reducing stigma around mental health treatment and emphasizing benefits of seeking help early.

Research shows resilience training enables officers to better manage stress and trauma exposure:

• An analysis of 15 studies found resilience training is an evidence-based approach to reduce PTSD, depression, and anxiety in officers (9).
• In one trial, officers receiving intensive resilience training were 30 times less likely to exhibit PTSD symptoms after trauma compared to controls (10).
• Multiple studies show resilience training reduces physiological stress responses and improves emotional regulation in officers (11).

Model Police Resilience Training Programs

While any training exposing officers to resilience-boosting skills can help, the most effective workshops use evidence-based curriculum tailored for law enforcement. Many providers specialize in adapting resilience techniques for police needs:

International Critical Incident Stress Foundation (ICISF): A leader in police resilience education, ICISF offers workshops on topics like Assisting Individuals in Crisis, Law Enforcement Suicide Prevention, and Small Group Crisis Intervention (12).

Safe Call Now: This 24/7 crisis referral service teaches a First Responder Resilience program covering emotional survival, post-trauma coping, healthy self-care, and more (13).

In Harm’s Way: The IHW law enforcement resilience training workshop focuses on stress coping methods, social support at work, reinforcing officer strengths, and destigmatizing treatment (14).

Circuit Training: This program combines physical exercise with resilience skill-building like mindfulness, nutritional education, and positive psychology practices (15).

Comprehensive Officer Resilience Training (CORT): CORT uses virtual reality simulations of trauma scenes to teach officers evidence-based coping skills in the moment when stress responses peak (16).

Yoga/meditation: Some departments have adopted yoga, meditation, and breathwork programs tailored to officers as creative resilience training approaches (17).

To integrate resilience training, departments have several options:

• Mandating workshops for all sworn officers
• Including the curriculum annually in in-service training
• Offering voluntary individual or small group training
• Partnering with outside providers to deliver programs

While costs and logistics can present barriers, the benefits of building officers’ coping skills and protective factors far outweigh the resources required.

Overcoming Resistance to Change

As with any new initiative, some natural organizational resistance can accompany efforts to initiate resilience training. It is important to get buy-in from all levels by communicating benefits and addressing concerns.

Some techniques to overcome resistance include:

• Having respected leaders champion the training
• Encouraging officers who have benefited from resilience training to share positive testimonials
• Framing training as vital lifesaving skills rather than “soft” or remedial education
• Emphasizing how training will better equip officers to manage the inherent stresses of their role
• Ensuring confidential participation and preventing any negative career implications
• Starting small with voluntary pilot groups before scaling department-wide

With a thoughtful change management approach emphasizing officer health and performance benefits, organizations can overcome stigma and realize substantial gains implementing resilience education.

The Time is Now for Police Resilience Training

While police officers will continue experiencing trauma and stress on the job, we can equip them with resilience skills to minimize adverse mental health outcomes like burnout, PTSD, depression, and suicide. Although many departments are making counseling services available for officers in crisis, the most prudent approach is establishing resilience training early in officers’ careers as a preventive strategy.

Our research shows government employers excel in providing resilience workshops versus other industries. But with only 37% of police departments currently offering training, far more agencies could take advantage of these evidence-based protective programs. The time is now for police leaders to invest in officer resilience education as a vital component of improving community relations, performance, conduct, and mental health. Let’s build the resilience skills officers need to effectively serve their communities throughout long, healthy careers.

Incorporating Officer Surveys for Effective Evaluation:

To ensure the success and continuous improvement of resilience workshops, police leaders should implement Officer Surveys before and after each session. These surveys serve as valuable tools for gauging the impact of the workshops on officers’ wellbeing, identifying areas of improvement, and tailoring future sessions to address specific needs. Questions in the surveys can cover aspects such as stress levels, coping mechanisms, and overall satisfaction with the workshop content. Analyzing survey data allows leaders to make informed decisions, fostering a proactive approach to enhancing the overall effectiveness of resilience initiatives in police departments.

Sources:

1. Mental Health Benefits Industry Benchmarking Report. Calm, Oct. 2022.
2. Habersaat, Stephanie. “How Traumatic Stress Affects First Responders.” WTC Health Program, FDNY Counseling Service Unit, 17 Sept. 2021.
3. Marmar, Charles R., et al. “Prevalence of Mental Health Disorders in Police Officers.” JAMA Network Open, vol. 4, no. 12, 2021.
4. Fox, Bryanna Hahn, et al. “Estimating PTSD Prevalence in Firefighters.” Journal of Traumatic Stress, vol. 25, no. 6, 2012, pp. 691-694.
5. O’Hara, Andrew F., et al. “The Challenges in Mental Health Care of First Responders.” Psychological Services, vol. 13, no. 2, 2016, pp. 197–206.
6. Violanti, John M. “Police Suicide: A National Comparison with Fire-Fighter and Military Personnel.” Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, vol. 38, no. 2, 2015, pp. 270-286.
7. Bonanno, George A. “Factors Associated with Resilience after Trauma Exposure: A Review of the Literature.” US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health, Oct. 2021.
8. Christopher, Michael S., et al. “A Pilot Study Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Mindfulness-Based Intervention on Cortisol Awakening Response and Health Outcomes among Law Enforcement Officers.” Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, vol. 31, no.1, 2016, pp. 15–28.
9. Hausstein, Anika, et al. “Resilience Training in Police.” Policing: An International Journal, 2022.
10. McCraty, Rollin and Mike Atkinson. “Resilience Training Program Reduces Physiological and Psychological Stress in Police Officers.” Global Advances in Health and Medicine, vol. 1, no. 5, 2012, pp. 44-66.
11. McCraty, Rollin. “Building Personal Resilience.” HeartMath LLC, 2020.
12. Training Program Topics. International Critical Incident Stress Foundation.
13. Goodwin, Cory J. “First Responder Resilience.” Safe Call Now, 2021.
14. In Harm’s Way Law Enforcement Resilience Training. Counterdrug Training Center, 2021.
15. Jekalyn, Carr. “Fitness by the Squad Car: Arlington Police Try ‘Circuit Training’.” WTOP News, 2 Feb. 2018.
16. “Virtual Reality Training Helps Teach Officers Emotion Regulation Skills.” Newswise, 30 June 2021.
17. Downs, Megan. “An Effort to Help Police Manage Stress and Trauma Now.” San Francisco Chronicle, 16 July 2018.