Debilitation from this daily stress accumulates making officers more vulnerable to traumatic incidents and normal pressures of life. The weakening process is often too slow to see; neither a person nor his friends are aware of the damage being done.
Programs for acute stress are important but are limited in their value for two reasons. First, they are a reaction to trauma that has occurred; an officer is already suffering. Important support can be given to the officer, but almost nothing can be done to prevent an incident that causes trauma. How does a police official stop an officer's partner from being killed next to him? Second, few officers are involved in traumatic incidents in a year compared with the whole department which meets stress in call after call.
If chronic stressors are identified, then police officials can take proactive steps. They can do something before an officer becomes another suicide statistic. Departments should stop making artificial distinctions between job-related and personal problems. The two are interwoven and contribute to each other. The end result is a group of people under the greatest stress in any job in