"Everything that you do tears away a little piece of you": How police officers cope with occupational exposure to suicide.

Abstract

Police officers commonly attend suicide callouts. Such work can have negative psychological and emotional consequences. This Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis study explored how police officers (N = 9; 8 males and one female; M age = 43 years) in New Zealand experienced and managed the psychological impacts of occupational exposure to suicide. Three key themes were developed: (1) The need to become self-reliant which describes how coping independently became a necessity; (2) The need to decompress with colleagues, with informal peer debriefing and dark humor being preferred coping strategies over professional help; and (3) Developing a thick skin, whereby repeated exposure and desensitization appeared to reduce acute distress but also seemed to contribute to emotional numbing and reduced empathy among participants. Within what was perceived as a policing culture that discouraged negative emotional expression and vulnerability, participants described a tendency to conceal their distress, seemingly linked to fears of negative judgment.