Extreme work, professionalism, and the construction of mental health in correctional work

Abstract As an employee population, correctional officers (COs) perform a stressful, dangerous, and extreme job that has significant consequences for their health and well-being. Yet, COs are often reluctant to focus on their own mental health concerns. In this study, we explore how US COs communicatively engage and avoid discussing mental health in relation to their work. Using a phronetic iterative approach, we analyze how a discourse of professionalism promotes COs (1) practicing emotion suppression and impersonalization to protect themselves from inmates and mental health challenges and (2) constructing mental health as an inmate problem in ways that may limit COs’ abilities to address their own mental health concerns. We assess how professional ideals thus serve as both a protective resource and a constraint, with dehumanizing consequences for COs and those they serve. We then consider theoretical implications for studying professionalism in working class occupations and stigma management communication. We also outline possibilities for disrupting and reconstructing mental health in correctional work.