Forensic Psychologist Nancy Panza on the Mental Pressures Police Face

There's not clear-cut solutions and the problem law enforcement to me is akin to the problem of education in that there's not a lot of money in it but it's an incredibly important part of the world, incredibly important part of our society. But yet the people that do it don't get paid well. Some police officers can make a really good living if they do a lot of overtime. That is true. But also you got to think about what kind of, what are you talking about? You're talking about someone literally giving up 80 hours a week of their life to make that kind of money. And when it comes to officer wellness, that's one of the things I recommend against. Is overtime. Yeah. I think you're right about that. It's very tempting financially. The more, like I say, the best description of what happens mentally, how the mental state of an officer kind of can get off track over time was written in a book. It's older now. It was early 2000s. A guy named Kevin Gilmartin wrote a book called, it's like emotional survival for law enforcement officers and their families. That's probably not exactly right but that's close. Best book I've ever read on police mental health. And he describes in such an easily digestible way what happens with police officers and their mental state. He talks about normal humans, we kind of, we live between the lines. This is a normal state of alertness and functioning. So we all are kind of in here. When you're on the job and as a police officer, you've got to live in this state of hypervigilance. You're on, you're alert, you're looking around, you're always ready and energized a little bit of adrenaline flowing. And so they have to live up there. Our bodies are meant to do that for short term. That's our nervous system, parasympathetic nervous system kicks in, we're alert. And you stay up there. And then when they come off the job, it dips down. But instead of going back into that middle zone, the normal zone where most of us are functioning, you know, kind of going about normal level of energy, they dip down below. Because once you've been on that high, kind of that rush while you've been on the job, your body needs to recover. So it goes down into this low state. And while it's down there, you know, you again, this is your nervous systems kicking back in, you're recovering, you're out of that beast mode and you're in, you don't feel great. You're tired, you kind of want to be alone, you want to get isolated, detached, you know, and a lot of cops kind of go and retreat when they get home and they need that go to my cave time. Your body can recover from this. So the cycle for cops is that they're up, and then when they come home, they go down. And it usually takes the body 18 to 24 hours to get back into the normal zone. Great. So if we did that one day, and then we dip down and recover, we come back. But what happens within 24 hours, well, you go back to work again. So what happens for cops is they're up, then they're low, then they're way up, then they're low. It's not the way our bodies were made to function. You're in this state of hypervigilance for so long, it starts to wear on you. It wears on you physically, it wears on you mentally, it wears on you emotionally, and you never get that recovery time to get back to a normal state. So they constantly are in this life. Shorter and shorter fuse. Yeah, tense and alert, and it makes you, it sort of just wears on you over time. The other thing it does that, you know, cops are notorious for having kind of trouble functioning at home if they're working too much and they're so into it, that on, tense state feels good. You're energized, you're alert, you're active, and then when you dip down, you don't feel good. So they start associating home with negative feelings and work with positive feelings. Oh, wow. And so then what do they do? They crave work more. So they go take overtime shifts and they hang out with other police officers and they start to kind of become their police self and they lose their personal self. So this is, I love Gil Martin's book for this and I've recommended it to any officer that I've come across if they haven't read it because it really beautifully explains this cycle and kind of what it does over time. And he also goes on to recommend, well, you know, how do you, and what the long and short of it is at the end, if you stay in that and you lose too much of your personal self, you become that burned out, bitter, angry, going to snap and, you know, and do some make a bad decision kind of place. So how do you resolve that? You know, you've got to protect your personal self. You've got to keep from getting hard and bitter and becoming too much of that police self. And so one of the things is you protect your off time and you use it. You engage, you do the things you love. You don't give up your hobbies. If you have a family and kids, you do things with your children. You have to get back into the real world so you remember that the real world is out there because if you are only in that state where all you're seeing is the things that cops see, which is negativity and stress and horror and trauma and angry people and hurt people and victimized people, if that's all you're seeing and you're spending all your life in that state, you forget what happens on the outside. And I think it's really hard to understand from the outside looking in. And I've told millions of people this story that I got a little bit, a little bit of a taste of it from my years when I was, before I went into the academic route and I was working in the prisons and forensic hospitals. And so here's maximum security setting, you know, being a young, small female in a maximum security setting, I'm surrounded by offenders who are mentally ill. It's not an easy gig and you got to really kind of, you got to be in that state of hyper vigilance. And so after a few years of that, I didn't notice it was having any effect on me until I was working at a federal prison at the time. And one of my college roommates came to visit me and we were hanging out and having a drink or whatever and joking. And after a while she was like, hey, Nance. And I was like, yeah, she's like, you're different. I was like, what are you talking about? I'm not different. I'm, what? Like, no, I'm not. She's like, you're really hard. You're I'm a little bit scared of you. And I was like, what do you mean? And she's like, you're just kind of hard. Like, you know, and I thought, no, like she's she's and when she said that it really kind of struck me. And like two weeks after that, I went to visit my sister and at the time she had young kids and I remember sitting outside watching somebody playing a ball game and looking at all these families and I remember having the thought like, what are they doing? Don't why are they all so happy? Don't they know of what all that's going on? Don't they know about all the horrible people in the world? They scared to be I thought, oh my God, she was right. Like I've my brain has started to go into a place where because every day I had to steal up, get tough, be ready for anything, have eyes in the back of my head because I was working in a really dangerous setting at that time. And I had to protect myself. And what I flash, you know, after that, I stopped working in the prisons and I softened back up and came back to like a normal state of functioning where I can turn it on or off depending on if I need to. But it really was telling to me to see how much your just your daily persona can shift when that's your day to day functioning. So that Gil Martin stuff with the, you know, the the waves and the hyper vigilance and the recovery and the more people start to become their police self more and more and lose their personal self. It's a really important thing for officers to be aware of and to track and to monitor if they want to stay balanced. The best of the cops that I know and I know a lot of really good ones, but I think of a few that stand out who I just simply adore as humans and are really wonderful officers. They have that balance really down when they're on their own. But then when they're off, they're doing stuff with their families, they're coaching their kids, ball teams, they're, you know, active physically, they're fit, they're mentally, you know, sharp, they they they have a real personal life that they hang on to that balances out what they see and the negativity that comes at them constantly in their in their day job. That's just not something that most of us have to deal with in our daily lives. And it's a really big deal. And that's, you know, those mental health checks that I push so hard for and that I really want to get going and to and to study and figure out how can we do these well can check in on that stuff and to help stop that cycle help to get people into a healthier place so that they don't become bitter and jaded and angry and more likely to do to you know, to be the bad apple as we like to say, the description of that cycle so important for people to recognize that. Yeah, you know, even though some human beings might be better at managing things, it's like there is there's an actual physical thing that's going on. There is. And when I when I meet with cops after an incident or you know, if they're coming in, that's the first place I go because it feels so comforting to know this isn't me being weak or me losing it. This is something physiological that's going on, you know, don't you think that a lot of these cops are tempted to do overtime just because the money so great? Absolutely. Yeah, yes. And that's one of the perks of the job. That's one of the things they love that they can I mean, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, they could literally double their pay. And it's and it's great to have that option. But again, at what cost there to have a balance, you know, some overtime is fine. But if that's all you're doing, right. And if you're doing it, this is probably really important key if you're doing it to avoid being at home, because being on the job is the only place you feel right, functional and alive and good. That's where the danger sets in if you're doing it because you know, you're you're trying to make extra money to get that, you know, to take your family on a trip, summer vacation or whatever. Absolutely. Like do it get that extra money, because that's great. But if you're doing it because that's the only place you feel alive and on an alert, you might be in trouble. Yeah, you might be getting a little bit off. And that's going to lead probably to a place it's not great.