Research reveals 9/11 impact on police mental health

Research reveals 9/11 impact on police mental health
Sept. 10, 2010 -- Within minutes of the September 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, police officers were on the scene, helping with the rescue and recovery effort. Almost a decade later, Rosemarie Bowler, lecturer emerita in psychology, is investigating how the trauma of 9/11 is unfolding in the lives of these police responders. Her latest results, published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, reveal differences in the way male and female police officers have been affected.


"We were surprised to find that women police officers, who have been recruited and trained in exactly the same way as their male colleagues, had much higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder following 9/11," Bowler said. "This stands in contrast to previous studies, conducted with Gulf War veterans and police officers in general, which found no gender differences."

Bowler and colleagues analyzed information, collected by trained interviewers in New York City, for more than 4,000 police responders to assess the prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD is an anxiety disorder that individuals can develop after experiencing a traumatic or terrifying event. Their analysis indicated that 13.9 percent of female officers had PTSD compared with 7.4 percent of male officers.
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http://www.sfsu.edu/~news/2010/fall/12.html