Grant: Team Grant: Mental Wellness in Public Safety Team Grants

Public safety personal (PSP) experience heightened operational stressors, including exposure to traumatic events, threats to personal safety, and witnessing acts of accidents, homicides, assaults, and suicide. The statistics regarding the physical, social, and psychological risks for members serving in PSP vocations are not encouraging; prevalence rates for posttraumatic stress injuries (PTSI) and posttraumatic stress disorders (PTSD) ranging from 8% to 32%. Children and spouses living in PSP-connected families also experience the effects of this operational stress, and too often programs and supports available to PSP are either unavailable to or noninclusive of family members. Given that many PSP report seeking informal support from family members, the study is guided by a superordinate query: Does providing intervention and support to youth and spouses in PSP-connected families in turn strengthen PSP mental health and wellbeing? The proposed study will address strategic awareness, prevention, and intervention strategies aimed at building on the strengths and resilience of PSP and their family members via a clinician-delivered Before Operational Stress (BOS) program. In addition to building capacity for professionals to deliver the BOS/BOS-Family programs, the study will also develop explore a new method of objectively measuring response-to-intervention via wearable technology. Strategic attention will be given to between-group differences, most notably exploring how PSP vocation and gender and sex interact with other demographic (e.g., age, family structure, region, PSP vocation) variables. The proposed research intends to support mental wellness among PSP by developing new knowledge pertaining to interventions and supports - delivered via targeted and intentional intervention programs - for PSP, youth, and spouses/partners related to their understanding the effects PSP occupational stress on the brain, emotional regulation, and relational development.