A psychological study of stress, personality and coping in police personnel

There have been few studies focusing on occupational/organizational causes of stress in police. Hardly any studies exist on personality traits and coping methods in this group of individuals.

To study the association of personality traits and coping methods to psychological stress in police personnel.

This cross-sectional study was conducted among the constables and head constables working in the Police Department, Vizianagram town, Andhra Pradesh.

The study sample consisted of 150 police persons. The socio-demographic data was individually collected from them. General Health Questionnaire-28 (GHQ-28) was used for assessing psychological stress, Eysenck's Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) for personality traits, and Coping Checklist-1 (CCL-1) for eliciting coping methods. The statistical analysis was done using SPSS v 10 software.

On screening by GHQ-28, 35.33% of the police were found to be having psychological distress. The socio-demographic variables showed no significant association to psychological stress. Personality traits such as neuroticism, psychoticism, and extroversion and coping methods like negative distraction and denial/blame showed statistically significant association (P<0.05) with psychological stress. The most commonly used coping methods across the sample were social support (72.55%), acceptance/redefinition (64.72%), and problem solving (60.46%). As measured by Pearson's correlation coefficient (r), there was evidence of linear association between certain personality traits and coping methods as well.

The personality traits and coping methods have significant independent and interactive role in the development of high psychological stress in police persons, thus placing them at a high risk of developing psychiatric disorders.