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Occupational stress and its coping strategies among the police personnel of the Chitradurga city: a cross-sectional study

Everyone relishes having a peaceful and safe society to live in. But very few pause for a minute to think about the people who indeed work hard to keep our community safe and secure. The police men have to face potentially hazardous situations that can result in physical or mental trauma or even death in the line of duty. In 2010 the police suicide rate in US was 11 per lakh for general public, 17 per lakh for the police and 20 per lakh for the army; whereas in India the suicide rate for 2006-07 was 7.5 per lakh for the army. The suicide rate in Maharashtra Police force was 17 per 1 lakh, while the national average was 10.5 per 1 lakh population. Police in India are truly stressed a lot and it was reported that nearly 168 personnel of various departments of Mumbai police ended their lives between 2002 and 2012. A National Crime Records Bureau report shows that the bleakness extends to the entire state. Over the last five years, Maharashtra has witnessed the maximum cases (144) of suicides by police personnel in the country and had the worst figures for 2007 and 2008. Madhya Pradesh and Haryana topped the list in 2009 and 2010 respectively. The report placed Maharashtra second behind Tamil Nadu, for 2011 and 2012. ABSTRACT


INTRODUCTION
Everyone relishes having a peaceful and safe society to live in. But very few pause for a minute to think about the people who indeed work hard to keep our community safe and secure. The police men have to face potentially hazardous situations that can result in physical or mental trauma or even death in the line of duty. 1 In 2010 the police suicide rate in US was 11 per lakh for general public, 17 per lakh for the police and 20 per lakh for the army; whereas in India the suicide rate for 2006-07 was 7.5 per lakh for the army. 2,3 The suicide rate in Maharashtra Police force was 17 per 1 lakh, while the national average was 10.5 per 1 lakh population. 4 Police in India are truly stressed a lot and it was reported that nearly 168 personnel of various departments of Mumbai police ended their lives between 2002 and 2012. A National Crime Records Bureau report shows that the bleakness extends to the entire state. Over the last five years, Maharashtra has witnessed the maximum cases All the policemen do not react similarly when facing the same situation. Something that may severely stress one person may not stress another in the same way. One might thrive if given a project deadline while another may feel all types of pressures and stressors to make the deadline. Stress can cause a multitude of problems in their professional and social life. Stress can lead to numerous sicknesses and when they bring that stress home it can cause their family to feel negative towards their job. This is just another added form of stress that they have to attempt to manage. The police is expected to jump from driving around in a patrol car to immediately diffusing someone else's family argument or arresting a bank robber. They must be able to turn their feelings off at the flick of a switch. This also often carries over into their personal life causing them to not be able to turn their emotions back on because of the feeling of weakness or even fear. Police are trained to put these walls up around their emotions to keep from being hurt or take the things that they see on a daily basis too personally. 6 Hence this study is conducted to highlight the stressful situations which the police personnel face daily and the coping strategies most commonly employed by them to tackle their stress.

Objectives
 To determine the stressful situations faced by the police personnel.  To ascertain the positive and negative coping strategies employed by the study participants.

METHODS
After getting approval from the Institutional Ethics Committee, permission was obtained from the Superintendent of Police to conduct this study in all the five police stations of Chitradurga city. The data collection was done from March 2014 to February 2015 by complete enumeration. A total of 282 police personnel who were available at that time constituted the study sample. Routine roll-call was selected as the most appropriate time to undertake the study to ensure most of the participants were present. The purpose of the study and how to respond the questions was explained to each and every participant. Informed consent was taken before they participated in the study. A structured questionnaire, written in the local language (Kannada), was given to all the participants. Stress was assessed using the Operational Police Stress Questionnaire. 7 The police personnel in all the five police stations of Chitradurga city were included in the study. Those who were not willing to participate in the study, who had not completed a minimum of one year of service, who remained absent even after five visits were excluded from the study. The data thus collected was entered in excel spread sheet and analysis was done using SPSS version 20. Mean and standard deviations were estimated for continuous variables. Chi-square test was used for qualitative variables.

RESULTS
A total of 282 policemen in the five police stations of the Chitradurga city were studied. The mean age of the participants was 36.13±10.33. Majority of them were males (89%), Hindus (95.4%), graduates (49.6%), living in their own house (38.7%), hailing from a nuclear family (62.1%) and belonged to socio-economic class I (50%) according to modified BG Prasad's classification. Only 29.1% of the study participants were not stressed, the remaining 70.9% were found to be stressed. Table 1 shows the twenty stressful questions as per the Operational Police Stress Questionnaire. In this study, the situation perceived most stressful was getting fatigued, followed by over-time demands, inadequate time to spend with friends and family, shift work, feeling like always being on the job. Other situations like Social stigmalimitations to social life, negative comments from the public; working alone at night were found to be moderately stressful. The risk of being injured on the job was perceived to be least stressful among the study participants.   Table 2 shows the association between stress and the work-related factors among the study participants. The stress was seen more in those who had difficulty in meeting deadlines, insufficient personal time, and inadequate family time [p = 0.000]. Even though the participants said that their relationship with colleagues was very friendly and shared their problems with the colleagues; were very often eager to go to work and always satisfied with their job, they were found to be stressed when compared to others [p = 0.000]. Those who felt that changes were needed in the department were more stressed (77.6%) than the others (63.1%) [p=0.007].
All the association found with the work-related factors was found to be statistically highly significant. Table 3 shows the distribution of copies strategies among the study participants. It was seen that most of the participants often devoted time for religious activities, took one step at a time to get the problem solved, thought how to best handle the problem. Also, most of them never tried to see the problem in a different light and never got upset over it. Majority of them never followed any negative coping methods like staying away, smoking, yelling or shouting, smashing things and trying to act as if nothing bothers them.  Table 4 shows that majority (60.6%) of them was using positive coping methods and only 4.6% were using negative coping methods.   Table 5 shows that among those using positive coping methods, 80.7% were stressed, whereas all of those using negative coping methods were stressed. However the association between stress and the coping method used was not statistically significant.
Among the positive coping strategies, the most commonly used strategy was to think how best to handle the problem (63.12%), followed by devoting more time in religious activities (57.8%), doing what needed to be done one step at a time (56.39%), accepting the reality (50.35%) and trying to see the problem in a different light to make it seem more positive (35.46%) (Figure 1). Among the negative coping strategies, the most commonly used strategy was to act as if nothing was bothering them (23.4%), followed by staying alone  The situation perceived most stressful was getting fatigued, followed by over-time demands, inadequate time to spend with friends and family, shift work, feeling like always being on the job, which is in corroboration with the other studies as well. [11][12][13] The risk of getting injured on the job was perceived least stressful. Similar report was given by Suresh et al. 11 The most commonly used positive coping strategy was to think how best to handle the problem, followed by devoting more time in religious activities, doing what needed to be done one step at a time, accepting the reality and trying to see the problem in a different light to make it seem more positive. A study done by Deb et al in traffic constables in Kolkata police also reported similar coping strategies used by them. 12 In the study conducted by Geetha et al it was reported that such positive coping methods reduce psychological stress considerably. 14 The most commonly used negative coping strategy was to act as if nothing is bothering them, followed by staying alone, smashing things, shouting at others and smoking. All of them who followed such negative coping methods were stressed, which is in corroboration with the studies conducted by Gershon et al and Violanti. 15,16 A study by Madu et al also lists using humour, social support, meditation, and delegation of responsibilities as coping strategies used by police persons. 17

CONCLUSION
The current study on the police personnel affirmed that the policemen are indeed stressed because of the demanding nature of their job. The work obligations drain their energy and they are left with little time to spend for themselves and their family. Such circumstances in the long run will leave them deprived of fulfillment in life in spite of the accomplishments in their career. The health of the policeman is at stake when he is left dissatisfied with only pressures from all sides. If better coping methods are adopted, it can help them to tackle the stress.

Recommendations
Stress is inevitable in the police department because of their job profile and the nature of work. It is very difficult to make a police department stress free, but few steps can be taken to reduce stress among the employees of police department. Reducing work load and working hours can give them more personal and family time. Relief camps, yoga sessions, training programs, counseling and other such programmes should be organized for the policemen regularly. Periodical health examination should be conducted to detect any morbidity developing or existing at the earliest.