Depression and Suicidal Thoughts Among Police Officers

Depression and Suicidal Thoughts Among Police Officers Differ Based on Gender and Work Shift, Study Finds

Release Date: October 16, 2008

BUFFALO, N.Y -- A quarter of female police officers and nearly as many male officers assigned to shift work had thought about taking their own lives, a new study of police work patterns and stress headed by a University at Buffalo researcher has shown.

In addition, reports of depressive symptoms among these officers were higher than in the general population -- 12.5 percent among women and 6.2 percent among men, compared to 5.2 percent in the population at large.

Unexpected among the findings was the difference between male and female officers when work shifts were analyzed. Policewomen who worked mostly day shifts reported having more suicidal thoughts than female colleagues assigned to work afternoons or nights, while the opposite was true for males.

Results of the study appear in the October 2008 edition of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine.

John Violanti, Ph.D., a former member of the New York State Police, research associate professor at the University at Buffalo, and first author on the paper, said he had expected to find that both men and women officers would be affected negatively by working midnight shifts, but that the results for women officers make sense.
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