ABSTRACT
An officer’s work life is often filled with high stakes, high stress, high risk, and uncertainty. Low pay and bad hours coupled with the occupational hazard of bringing stress home leads many officers’ home lives to be financially strapped and chaotic. It is often challenging to instantaneously discern whether threatening appearances reflect an actual threat or an artifact of mental illness – and officers often do not have the training to make those calls, nor the luxury of time to consider the circumstances. The repair for mental health issues plaguing civilians is for officers to train more extensively on appreciating, diagnosing, and understanding acute and chronic mental health challenges so they can recognize them and make more reasoned assessments and perceptions of threats and appropriate law enforcement responses. Officer mental health challenges can also adversely affect the communities the officers serve and the people they encounter on the job.
