Rational Part 1
Verania Villela Alvarez
Northern Arizona College
AHB-495 Applied Human Behavior Portfolio Capstone
Margaret Boatright
March 4, 2025
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to show the impact that trauma can have on law enforcement officers both personally and professionally. Many people within the community, including some of these officers, believe that therapy and/or psychological help just makes them look weak when they are really our heroes. This will also show and demonstrate the amount of stressful situations these officers face on a daily basis and the risks they take in order to protect and serve the communities we live in.
Pre-Research Discussion
The reason that I chose this topic is because I have always been interested and have had a passion for working with mental health within the criminal justice system. When I first started college, I initially had chosen my degree to be Criminal Justice. I later found out about this 90/30 program in Applied Human Behavior and felt that this was completely within my interest. I have always loved the study of human behavior and have always tied it with my interest in the criminal justice system.
What I had always dreamed of and will probably always have it as a goal is to become a homicide detective. There are many jobs within this career field that catch my attention. I currently work for Adult Probation with Maricopa County and love it. Recently, I had applied to work within the police department for Goodyear, however I ended up pulling my application because I had felt I wasn’t ready. Now, I have realized that one of the biggest things that I have always wanted to do is right in the reach of my hands. My passion has always been the study of human behavior, much more connected with the criminal justice system, and I have decided to apply for the position of a probation officer. The role of the probation officer is to supervise justice involved individuals out in the community and help them create goals to stay out of trouble. While many of them don’t realize this, mental health plays a major goal with officers and their clients. They constantly are portrayed as both individuals that help with the clients’ mental health as well as maintaining them grounded and following their conditions of probation.
In this paper, I will discuss the effects that trauma has on these law enforcement officers. Whether it be a probation officer, detention officer or police officer, many if not all face stressful situations and/or traumatic experiences that change their life for the better or for the worse. This paper will show the percentages and numbers that are found with research on trauma and law enforcement.
Post Research Discussion
After analyzing and going through all of the articles, it is clear that many officers, whether reported or not, endure many traumas from calls or stressful situations that they have been through. The trauma these officers experience can manifest in many ways throughout time. This can be seen through PTSD, anxiety, suicide, burnout, mental health struggles and many other ways. It is clear that many of the departments have a high need for services with therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists if possible to help our law enforcement officers.
Continuous exposure to traumatic events can cause exhaustion, not just with law enforcement officers, but trauma can lead to emotional and physical problems. Throughout the articles, I noticed a correlation with secondary post traumatic stress within law enforcement officers. Although many of the situations are calls that they have attended, the gruesome scenes that they have seen sometimes can cause a trauma which makes them feel as if they would have been there themselves.
If an organization came into contact with these law enforcement agencies in implementing therapy services for these officers as individuals, I believe it would be a huge help to the mental health of these officers. Being able to teach them some coping skills and mechanisms for dealing with this type of exposure out on the streets can help reduce the trauma or help at least.
Annotated Bibliography
Cerel, J., Jones, B., Brown, M., Weisenhorn, D. A., & Patel, K. (n.d.). Suicide exposure in law
enforcement officers. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/sltb.12516
In this article, law enforcement officers completed and online survey about their suicide exposure. Within the results, it was stated that almost all of the participants (95%) had responded to at least one suicide scene attempt (Cerel, 2018). The exposure to calls and situations that involve or regard suicide exposure can have profound effects on officers and and their emotional well being. This can also have a suicide risk within the law enforcement officers themselves (Cerel, 2018). Research has shown that officers are more likely to die by suicide than in the line of duty. Officers are often in a state of stress because of the job, have exposure to violent situations, and trauma can be formed and lead to officers having feelings of depression, anxiety and/or isolation. With law enforcement, there is often a stigma among them that officers may feel that showing vulnerability or not being tough is not acceptable, however that is not the case. Officers may often feel that if they reach for help, that can have a negative impact with their career and/or reputation (Cerel, 2018). Like stated, oftentimes officers are left with secondary trauma when regularly exposed to harsh situations like these.
Daniel, A. M., & Treece, K. S. (2021, September 1). Law enforcement pathways to mental
health: Secondary traumatic stress, social support, and social pressure - journal of police and criminal psychology. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11896-021-09476-5
“For many people, ambiguity exists at all of the steps, from identifying the signs of mental illness and need for treatment….” (Daniel & Treece, 2021). This also is true within law enforcement officers. Like the last article, officers tend to keep their traumas and mental health struggles to themselves because they feel as if they might have a bad reputation with their career if they do speak up and ask for help. “Not only do many individuals often fail to identify their mental health status, but they are often reluctant to seek diagnosis because of mental illness stigma and fear of discrimination” (Daniel & Treece, 2021). Within this article, PTSD was the leading impact with law enforcement officers. Due to the amount of repeated incidents that officers attend and the continued exposure to these traumatic incidents, they are in constant exposure to primary and secondary traumatic stress. Like stated in the past articles, there is a stigma that is often common with police officers. The struggle that many face whether it be law enforcement officers and the general public is speaking up about their mental health struggles because they are afraid of looking weak. With this article, the authors wanted to find how law enforcement officers entered the mental health care system and how they sought out for these services.
Lorey, K., & Fegert, J. M. (2022). Incorporating Mental Health Literacy and
Trauma-Informed Law Enforcement: A Participative Survey on Police Officers’ Attitudes and Knowledge Concerning Mental Disorders, Traumatization, and Trauma Sensitivity. https://research.ebsco.com/c/s6a36w/viewer/pdf/qpm5wx6bcf?route=details
With this article, police officers were asked to fill out a questionnaire. With mental health, it showed that depression was the best known disorder among police officers. Within this article, mental health within the individuals that police officers have encounters with was also talked about. “...strengthening the behavioral and psychological competency of law enforcement personnel will improve the support for potentially traumatized victims, witnesses, and survivors, as well as legal proceedings” (Lorey & Fergert, 2022). This article incorporated both the mental health of individuals out in the community as well as the mental health of law enforcement officers. This article had a focus on incorporating mental health literacy and trauma informed practices into law enforcement all while evaluating police officers attitudes and knowledge regarding mental health disorders. This article was great because it also spoke about the effects that come with dealing with individuals with mental health disorders has on law enforcement individuals.
Novy, M. (2017, February 23). Cognitive distortions during law enforcement shooting - activitas
nervosa superior. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/bf03379584
In this article, cognitive distortions in police shootings are described and explained. Cognitive distortion is the term introduced in the clinical literature by Beck (1976, 1985), who uses this term to describe patterns of biased information processing related negative effects. For police officers, it is a difficult situation when they are involved in shootings or the killing of another individual due to a threat to their safety. When dealing with these situations, it can be seen that the state of being put through such an extremely stressful situation, officers often get cognitive distortions. Although being involved in shootings can be a traumatic experience for an officer, there have been other situations that officers have had become more traumatic within their life on the job.
Singletary, G. (2023, September 19). Law enforcement and mental health: The limpid
kryptonite-a clear and present danger - journal of police and criminal psychology. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11896-023-09609-y
In this article, the mental disorders that these officers can go through are explained. As stated in the previous articles, suicide deaths by police are becoming a global pandemic, and research suggests that police suicide is increasing in the United States (Singletary, 2023). Police officers go through many stressors on their day to day basis personally and professionally. These officers do not just risk their life every single day but also are expected to keep calm, possess soft skills and demonstrate empathy when out on patrol. This can cause officers a high amount of stress, therefore leading to mental disorders that have been brought up multiple times. “In 2019, 228 officers died by suicide in the United States, compared to 132 who were killed in the line of duty” (Levin, 2021). This just goes to show how often we fail our police officers when it comes to their mental health. Oftentimes, like mentioned before, that is one of the reasons that police officers fail or prefer to not speak up on their mental health state. In this article, limpid kryptonite is mentioned. “Limpid Kryptonite is characterized by the juxtaposition of police officers being regarded as superheroes, while internally struggling in silence facing invincible battles unseen by the community” (Singletary, 2023). This shows how officers are held to a very high standard when doing their job, however many are not checked up on to see how they are doing or if help is being needed/provided.
Rational Part 2
Verania Villela Alvarez
Northern Arizona College
AHB-495 Applied Human Behavior
Margaret Boatright
April 8, 2025
Introduction
With the Applied Human Behavior program, I have most definitely increased my knowledge in what the mental health profession is and what they deal with. The program has helped shape my personality into a person that is a little more empathetic than the normal and has helped me view people with mental health differently as well. This program has helped me amplify my knowledge in the ethical standards of the mental health profession as well as intervention and putting into practice what we study.
Human Systems & Diversity
With human systems and diversity, there were two assignments that helped me with the learning outcomes. The first learning outcome that was asked of was the understanding of the nature of human systems and applying the historical perspectives to analyzing and solving current social conditions. For this learning outcome, I feel that all of the deviance discussion boards from AHB-340 helped me understand the level of functioning of individuals and how the community functioned as well. With the deviance discussion boards, we were able to look at a deviance topic, analyze it, and explain how the community viewed this topic as well as why the individual might have acted a certain way. For the second learning outcome, we were asked for an assignment in which we recognized current ethics and laws related to primary and secondary characteristics of diveristy. The assignment that I completed under this learning outcome was the Universal Design Website Analysis. For this assignment, I had chosen a favorite coffee shop that I visited almost daily at the time and compared it to other similar coffee shop competitions and analyzed and explained the cultural and diverse factors that the coffee shop offered. With this assignment, I learned how to compare and point out the good and bad of certain places, however all by viewing the importance of diversity.
Practice & Intervention
Under the first learning outcome, we were to understand and apply a variety of psychological, social work, sociological, and urban planning theories to promote the optimal functioning of individuals and communities. The assignment that helped me immensely with this learning outcome was the chapter analysis and presentation in my AHB-375 class. This assignment was very difficult, however with the help of my other two classmates/friends, we were able to get it done and exceeded. With this assignment, my knowledge just grew with urban planning of a city and how the government plays a major role with an urban city and its planning. I was able to learn about how business people and investors can help a city grow, all while also being able to create a non-profit organization. The other learning outcome under practice and intervention was to explain aspects of human development, the life cycle, familial and relationship dynamics and how they affect individual growth and success. The assignment that helped me the most with this learning outcome was the addiction theory and modality essay. The reason that I was able to retain the information with this assignment is because I connected it a little more to my personal life and those around me. With the addiction theory essay, I wrote about alcohol and its effects on someone as well as its effects on the family and friends around them. This assignment allowed me to explain how a certain addiction affected not just the individual, however the community around them as well and the dangers of the effects throughout their lifespan.
Community Engagement & Responsibility
First learning outcome for this one was to identify the impact that socioeconomics, public policy, community development, and global issues have on individuals and communities ability to resolve psychological or social issues and develop new strategies for success. Under this one, the assignment that helped me the most was the global citizenship group presentation for AHB-350.. My partner and I had presented about drug trafficking, its effects globally, and what new strategies could be placed to reduce drug trafficking. For the second learning outcome, it was listed as understanding how globalization and internationalism impact citizenship, participation, and social responsibility in mezzo and macro environments. For this one, the assignments that helped me the most were all of the discussion posts that we were a part of under my AHB-350 class as well. With all of the discussion posts, we were given questions in which we had to research in our book and explain how this was a global problem and how we could find solutions to these problems. Same with this one, I was able to relate to the discussion posts because they were relatable to real life situations and ongoing global problems.
Professional Preparedness
For the first learning outcome, it was to understand the importance of social science research and apply research to select solutions or implement best practices. For the assignment that helped me understand this the most was the research proposal for my AHB-305W class. This was probably the hardest class that I have had as of today. This class helped me see that in the human services profession, there is plenty of research that has to be done to explain certain disorders, certain addictions, certain statistics and many other things. This assignment helped me expand my knowledge and challenge my brain with coming up with my own plan for solutions for my proposal. For the second learning outcome, we were to be aware and have the capacity to apply the most prevalent ethical, legal, and safety guidelines for direct practice and intervention with clients. For this assignment, I chose the ethics essay that I just completed for my AHB-425 class. With this essay, I was able to read and implement into my essay the importance of ethics in the mental health profession and describe the legal and safety measures that have to be taken when dealing with clients and patients. This essay is of great help to the real world and being able to apply it just anywhere that you work because confidentiality is very important no matter where you are working.
Personal Values & Development
Under the first learning outcome, we were to explore personal and professional values, ethics, and career driven dilemmas through participation in self-reflection and professional exploration exercises, self-critique, discussion and group activities. For this assignment, I chose to list all of the abstinence and acquisition discussions we had to be a part of for my AHB-420 class. All of the discussion posts that we were a part of were in listing an addiction that we had, cut off something, or add something that was of a benefit to our life. In this assignment, I was able to self-reflect on what I was doing wrong with my addiction and I was also able to put myself in other people’s shoes that may be dealing with a certain type of addiction. I learned not to judge just by what we see or hear, because we really don’t know what someone is going through until we go through it or apply it ourselves. Under the second learning outcome, it states developing personal experiences, critical thinking skills and challenging current worldviews through teamwork, self-assessment, course projects, service learning and community internship experience. For this assignment, I chose to list the deviance essay that I completed in my AHB-340 class. The reason I chose to list this assignment for this learning outcome is because I was able to use my critical thinking skills and view two films in which deviance was shown and create an essay using what we learned in the class to tie it with the films. This challenged me because we normally view movies for entertainment, however I was able to watch these films and detect the deviance that was being acted out in the movies as well as critically analyze and tie in the important theories learned in the class.
Conclusion
The assignments that I listed as well as the ones that I didn’t list have all helped me with my personal development with the mental health profession. Without these courses, I may have found the information somewhere else, however it is great to have the opportunity of being a part of the program and obtain the knowledge that all of my professors have shared with me. What surprised me about my courses was how much I would actually use in real life. Since I already work with an agency that ties together with the mental health profession, it is amazing to see how these courses can help add to the department and/or enforce new positive changes.