Evidence Rating for Outcomes
Mental Health & Behavioral Health | Depression |
Mental Health & Behavioral Health | Anxiety |
Mental Health & Behavioral Health | Burnout |
Mental Health & Behavioral Health | Sleep quality |
Date:
This practice encompasses a wellness intervention that seeks to reduce the negative impact of stress on police officers, to improve their mental health outcomes. The practice is rated Effective for improving measures of depression, anxiety, and burnout. The practice is rated No Effects for improving measures of sleep quality.
Practice Goals
Policing can be a stressful occupation and lead to mental health challenges for officers (Haugen et al. 2017; Jetelina et al. 2020). There are interventions designed to help officers overcome these challenges and reduce the negative impact of their jobs on their mental health. One such intervention is mindfulness training that employs various strategies to build an individual’s awareness of their internal and external experiences in a given moment (Baer 2003). The goal is to improve officers’ physical and mental health outcomes.
Target Population/Practice Components
Mindfulness interventions for law enforcement officers teach strategies to manage stressors such as critical incidents, job dissatisfaction, and public scrutiny, as well as interpersonal and behavioral challenges that stem from their work (Christopher et al. 2018). Each program has unique components and may vary in length. Generally, sessions are offered over six to eight weeks and are usually two hours per session with one longer session throughout the program. Components of mindfulness interventions may include attention regulation, body awareness, emotion regulation, mindfulness meditation to change one’s perspective of oneself (Navarrete et al. 2022), cognitive education (Krick and Felfe 2020), managing police-related stress (Christopher et al. 2018), values clarification, positive psychology (Trombka et al. 2021), and informal mindfulness practices that can be integrated into police work such as “drop-ins” to present-moment experiences, brief breath manipulations, and cultivating “mindful pauses” (Grupe et al. 2021). Sessions are instructional and involve active participation with exercises such as body scanning, walking meditation, mindful movement (adapted yoga or tai chi), mindful eating, small group discussions of participants’ experiences with the exercises, guided imagery, or use of silence (Christopher et al. 2018; Trombka et al. 2021).
Mindfulness programs may also focus on breathwork and techniques for compassion training and can be adapted to meet the cultural needs of law enforcement officers.
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Mental Health & Behavioral Health | Depression
Examining the results across four randomized controlled trials, Withrow, Russell, and Gillani (2023) found a statistically significant effect (SMD = -0.56) for mindfulness training on measures of police officersâ depression. This result suggests that law enforcement officers in the intervention groups who received mindfulness training demonstrated decreases in depression symptoms at the postintervention timepoint, compared with law enforcement officers in the control groups who did not receive mindfulness training. |
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Mental Health & Behavioral Health | Anxiety
Examining the results across four randomized controlled trials, Withrow, Russell, and Gillani (2023) found a statistically significant effect (SMD = -0.32) for mindfulness training on measures of police officersâ anxiety. This result suggests that law enforcement officers in the intervention groups who received mindfulness training demonstrated decreases in anxiety symptoms at the postintervention timepoint, compared with law enforcement officers in the control groups who did not receive mindfulness training. |
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Mental Health & Behavioral Health | Burnout
Examining the results across two randomized controlled trials, Withrow, Russell, and Gillani (2023) found a statistically significant effect (SMD= -0.45) for mindfulness training on measures of burnout. This result suggests that law enforcement officers in the intervention groups who received mindfulness training reported decreases in burnout symptoms at the postintervention timepoint, compared with law enforcement officers in the control groups who did not receive mindfulness training. Such results should be interpreted with caution, however, given that only two studies were included in the analysis. |
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Mental Health & Behavioral Health | Sleep quality
Examining the results across three randomized controlled trials, Withrow, Russell, and Gillani (2023) found no statistically significant effect of mindfulness training on officersâ sleep quality. |
Literature Coverage Dates | Number of Studies | Number of Study Participants | |
---|---|---|---|
Meta Analysis | 2018-2021 | 4 | 612 |
Withrow, Russell, and Gillani (2023) conducted a meta-analysis to evaluate mindfulness training for law enforcement on officersâ physical and mental health outcomes.
To find eligible studies, PubMed, Scopus, APA PsycINFO, CI- NAHL, and ERIC databases were searched. Additional search methods were used to ensure completeness of the review process, which included searching for dissertations and theses in Open Access Theses and Dissertations, reviewing relevant government organizations focused on policing, and contacting one expert in the field. Inclusion criteria for this review included randomized controlled trials or experimental studies of any type of training or intervention focused on law enforcement officers with a mindfulness component. Additionally, studies must have included at least one comparison group (e.g., no intervention comparison group or waitlist), be published in English, and have measured outcomes related to physical or mental health symptoms or both. Interventions were included in this study with both formal and informal mindfulness curricula.
Following screening, a total of 33 articles were included for full-text review. After review, there were five articles that met all criteria and were therefore included in the data extraction and systematic review. Of the five studies extracted for the systematic review, only four were included in the meta-analysis portion, as one study was non-randomized. There were 612 participants for analysis, with 302 individuals in the intervention conditions and 310 individuals in the control groups. The studies were conducted in the United States, Germany, Spain, and Brazil. All studies focused on adults employed as police officers, and all participants were screened for eligibility into the studies using recruitment methods such as the internet, email, social media, posters or flyers, and in-person announcements. Three of the four studies included in the meta-analysis used comparison group waitlists with the intervention offered after the study was completed (Christopher et al. 2018; Grupe et al. 2021; Trombka et al. 2021), and one used a control group that received regular police education courses rather than the intervention (Krick and Felfe 2020).
Outcomes of interest were depression, anxiety, sleep quality, and burnout. Depression and anxiety were measured with the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information, the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, and the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule-X. Measures for the sleep quality outcome included the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information, the Mohr Health Complaints Scale, and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Inventory. Burnout outcome measures included the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory or the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory.
A random-effects inverse variance method was used for all outcomes except burnout, which was analyzed using a fixed-effects inverse variance method because there were only two studies included. Effect sizes were determined by calculating the standardized mean difference (SMD) between the mindfulness intervention group and the control group for each outcome. A weighted average of the intervention effect from the individual trials was calculated. Effect sizes were derived for four outcomes: 1) depression (based on four studies), 2) anxiety (based on four studies), 3) burnout (based on two studies), and 4) sleep quality (based on three studies).
These sources were used in the development of the practice profile:
Withrow, Ashley, Katie Russell, and Braveheart Gillani. 2023. "Mindfulness Training for Law Enforcement to Reduce Occupational Impact: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis." The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles 0(0):1-19.
These sources were used in the development of the practice profile:
Baer, Ruth. 2003. “Mindfulness Training as a Clinical Intervention: A Conceptual and Empirical Review.” Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice 10(2):125–43
Christopher, Michael S., Matthew Hunsinger, Lt. Richard J. Goerling, Sarah Bowen, Brant S. Rogers, Cynthia R. Gross, Eli Dapolonia, and Jens C. Pruessner. 2018. “Mindfulness-Based Resilience Training to Reduce Health Risk, Stress Reactivity, and Aggression among Law Enforcement Officers: A Feasibility and Preliminary Efficacy Trial.” Psychiatry Research 264:104–15.
Grupe, Daniel W., Jonah L. Stoller, Carmen Alonso, Chad McGehee, Chris Smith, Jeanette A. Mumford, Melissa A. Rosenkranz, and Richard J Davidson. 2021. “The Impact of Mindfulness Training on Police Officer Stress, Mental Health, and Salivary Cortisol Levels.” Frontiers in Psychology 12: 720–53.
Haugen, Peter T., Aileen M. McCrillis, Geert E. Smid, and Mirjam J. Nijdam. 2017. “Mental Health Stigma and Barriers to Mental Health Care for First Responders: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” Journal of Psychiatric Research 94: 218–29.
Jetelina, Katelyn K., Rebecca J. Molsberry, Jennifer R. Gonzalez, Alaina M. Beauchamp, and Trina Hall. 2020. “Prevalence of Mental Illness and Mental Health Care Use Among Police Officers.” JAMA Network Open 3(10):e2019658.
Krick, Annika, and Jörg Felfe. 2020. “Who Benefits from Mindfulness? The Moderating Role of Personality and Social Norms for the Effectiveness on Psychological and Physiological Outcomes Among Police Officers.” Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 25(2):99–112.
Navarrete, Jaime, Miguel Ángel García-Salvador, Ausiàs Cebolla, and Rosa Baños. 2022. “Impact of Mindfulness Training on Spanish Police Officers’ Mental and Emotional Health: A Non-Randomized Pilot Study.” Mindfulness 13:695–711.
Trombka, Marcelo, Marcelo Demarzo, Daniel Campos, Sonia B. Antonio, Karen Cicuto, Ana L Walcher, Javier García-Campayo, Zev Schuman-Olivier, and Neusa S. Rocha. 2021. “Mindfulness Training Improves Quality of Life and Reduces Depression and Anxiety Symptoms Among Police Officers: Results From The POLICE Study-A Multicenter Randomized Controlled Trial.” Frontiers in Psychiatry 12:624876.
Age: 18
Gender: Male, Female
Setting (Delivery): Workplace
Practice Type: Cognitive Behavioral Treatment, Conflict Resolution/Interpersonal Skills, Vocational/Job Training
Unit of Analysis: Persons