Determinants of mental health of police officers: A pathway model

Abstract

Abstract Background The police work environment is associated with traumatic experiences and a high risk of stress for officers. Additionally, a hierarchical organizational environment and shift work can lead to exposure to high stress and may affect their mental health. Police officers’ mental health issues can affect their ability to safely perform their duties and lead to increased medical care-related expenses of public health and police organization; hence, factors that influence their mental health must be examined. The aim of this study was to investigate the mental health levels of police officers, identify factors related to their mental health, and analyze the paths among these factors. Methods A cross-sectional design was used, and 357 police officers from a metropolitan area in South Korea were included. The selected research variables were mental health, resilience, social support, mental health resource availability, health behavior, job stress, and trauma experience, using the PRECEDE (Predisposing, Reinforcing, and Enabling Constructs in Educational Diagnosis and Evaluation) model. Four hypotheses were investigated regarding direct and indirect relationships among the variable. Descriptive statistics, multivariate regression, and path analyses were performed using STATA 17.0. Results The participant groups’ mental health level ranked as “high risk”, with an average of 19.93 out of 54 using tool which was psychosocial well-being index short form. Path analysis showed that the hypothesis based on PRECEDE model could be fitted with the current data (RMSEA = .183, GFI = .571, SRMR = .080. CFI = .571 and TLI = .010). It was also confirmed that there were partial direct and indirect relationships between the variables. In a direct effect, higher health behavior (coefficient = .24, p < .001) and lower job stress (coefficient = − .28, p < .001) were positively associated with mental health. Additionally, higher mental health resource availability (coefficient = .10, p = .025) and lower traumatic experience (coefficient = − .10, p < .001) were indirectly positively associated with mental health. Conclusions The findings of this study can be applied to the development of a health policy model for supporting the mental health of police officers and the establishment of mental health intervention strategies for this population.