Stress and resilience in law enforcement training and practice

For law enforcement and emergency services professionals, stress and resilience are not academic topics or luxuries; they are essential to the physical and mental health, as well as to optimum job functioning. This article traces the history of the stress and resilience concepts in psychology, the military, and law enforcement, outlines the major risk and protective factors for traumatic stress responses, and presents a general psychophysiological model of stress and coping. The article next applies these concepts to the proactive fostering of mental toughness and resilience, using lessons learned from sports psychology and the mental conditioning literature. It then describes psychological debriefing, mental health counseling, and psychotherapeutic strategies for facilitating resilient recovery from critical incidents and traumatic events. Although directed mainly to law enforcement, the principles set out in this article may be productively applied to emergency medicine, public safety, military, and civilian trauma counseling settings.