Attitudes and Emotions of German Police Officers Towards the Mentally Ill

• NCJ Number: 215060
• Journal: International Journal of Police Science & Management Volume: 8 Issue: 2 Dated: Summer 2006 Pages: 119-132
• Author(s): Sven Max Litzcke
• Date Published: 2006
• Length: 14 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United Kingdom

Annotation

This study compared German police officers' attitudes and feelings about the mentally ill with those of a sociodemographically similar sample of individuals who were not police officers.

Abstract

Both groups had similar general attitudes toward mentally ill persons, i.e., compassion, discomfort, and a desire to help. The one area where the two groups differed was on the variable of social distance. Police officers were less willing than nonpolice respondents to welcome mentally ill persons into a social relationship. Both groups, however, reacted more emotionally to the mentally ill than to mentally healthy persons portrayed in a movie shown to both groups. Participants' highest emotional reactions were evoked by the movie scene of a suicidally depressive patient. The three most frequent emotional reactions to the mentally ill were compassion, a desire to help, and a lack of understanding of or identification with mental illness. Police officers reacted with less emotion than nonpolice officers when they were faced with mental patients, which suggest that police officers have more contact with and are therefore less emotionally reactive to them than persons who have infrequent or no contact with mentally ill individuals. The fact that police officers maintain a greater social distance and lower emotional reactions in their interactions with mentally ill individuals enables them to have more composure, even in stressful situations, compared with individuals who do not have regular occupational or social interactions with mentally ill persons. The study involved 105 police officers in Bavaria and Baden-Wurttemberg (Germany) and 102 civil servants in these cities. The two groups were comparable in terms of job security and wages, and they shared similar sociodemographic variables. Data were collected through questionnaires administered in 2001 and 2002. Responses included a measure of reactions to 14 movie clips that included behaviors by mentally ill people and by highly emotional people who were not mentally ill. 8 tables and 21 references