PECULIARITIES OF THE PHENOMENON OF EMOTIONAL BURNOUT SYNDROME AMONG EMPLOYEES OF THE NATIONAL POLICE OF UKRAINE

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Professional activities of National Police employees are always accompanied with considerable psycho-emotional stress, professional stress and risk, psychological traumatism. The stressful nature of the work of the National Police officers, as well as the negative determinants of professional activity, occasionally lead to the emergence of a negative phenomenon – emotional burnout, and the consequence of their activity under conditions of constant influence of stress factors is the loss of positive professional motivation, manifestation of various neurotic reactions, mental and physical health disorders. Most scientists-police officers are inclined to believe that 70% of police officers who have used guns during the fulfillment of their official duties take the decision to quit from service for five years because they have experienced a significant mental injury. Research of this category of persons revealed that they had post-traumatic stress disorder (60%), and every third police officer had excessive emotional and psychological stress (36%), functional impairment (49.7%) 1 . Special conditions of professional activity of the employees of the National Police of Ukraine, namely: risk-taking activity with unpredictable consequences (injury, wounds), communication with antisocial elements, permanent mental and physical overload – lead to intensive and large-scale development of emotional burnout, and therefore to professional deformation. The activities of the police are characterized by a significant negative emotional saturation, when during their professional duties it is necessary to restrain their negative emotions, and emotional unloading is mostly postponed for an indefinite period of time. The emotional burnout, according to most scholars, is defined as “... the acquired stereotype of emotional response most often within the limits of professional behavior. On the one hand, it allows a person to dose and economically use energy resources, and on the other hand – it can negatively influence the performance of his professional activities, relations with partners in the sphere of communication and service” 2 .