In plain language
Policing is one of the most stressful jobs there is, and officers often cope by avoiding or suppressing difficult thoughts and feelings. This study asked a different question: do the opposite skills—mindfulness, acceptance, and the ability to notice and name your emotions—protect new officers as they move from the training academy into real police work?
The researchers followed 60 Australian police recruits over roughly a year, measuring mindfulness, emotion identification skill, experiential avoidance, thought suppression, and mental health at the academy and again after they had been working as officers. On average, depression and general mental health problems increased after recruits entered the workforce—but not everyone was affected equally.
Recruits who started out more mindful, who could identify their feelings, and who did not habitually suppress their thoughts showed smaller increases in depression, even after accounting for their starting mental health. Mindfulness was the single strongest and most unique predictor, explaining about 14% of the variance in later depression. The findings suggest that police organisations could benefit from training that builds mindfulness and emotional awareness rather than encouraging avoidance.
Key findings
- Depression and general mental health problems increased significantly, on average, as recruits moved from the training academy into active police work.
- Mindfulness at the academy predicted lower depression one year later, after controlling for baseline depression, and was the strongest unique predictor—accounting for about 14% of the variance in follow-up depression scores.
- Difficulty identifying feelings at baseline predicted both worse general mental health and higher depression after a year on the job.
- Thought suppression at baseline predicted higher depression at follow-up, consistent with the idea that suppressing unwanted thoughts backfires.
- The process measures (mindfulness, emotion identification, avoidance, suppression) were moderately stable across the transition from academy to workplace, whereas mental health measures were not.
- Results suggest police training could usefully include interventions that develop mindfulness and emotion identification skills to build resilience.
How to cite
APA
Williams, V., Ciarrochi, J., & Deane, F. P. (2010). On being mindful, emotionally aware, and more resilient: Longitudinal pilot study of police recruits. Australian Psychologist, 45(4), 274–282. https://doi.org/10.1080/00050060903573197
BibTeX
@article{williams2010on,
title = {On being mindful, emotionally aware, and more resilient: Longitudinal pilot study of police recruits},
author = {Williams, Virginia and Ciarrochi, Joseph and Deane, Frank Patrick},
journal = {Australian Psychologist},
volume = {45},
number = {4},
pages = {274--282},
year = {2010},
doi = {10.1080/00050060903573197}
}
Related work
- All publications by Joseph Ciarrochi (searchable, with free PDFs)
- Process-Based Therapy & Idionomic Analysis
Author: Joseph Ciarrochi (ORCID 0000-0003-0471-8100). Free copy hosted with permission for scholarly use. Please cite the published version via the DOI above.