Police officers are no strangers to tragedy. They are first responders to incidents of all kinds from homicides and shootings to vehicle crashes and natural disasters. Equally important to having a tactical response plan for these incidents is having a wellness response plan.
The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) has developed a new training program to assist agencies and individuals in developing skills to use in the aftermath of a tragedy.
The goal of this training is to provide officers and their support systems with practical and realistic skills that enhance post-traumatic growth and resilience skills.
The Impact of Tragedy
Tragedies can have a significant impact on an officer, an agency, and a community, and they can come in the form of different critical incidents. The IACP’s new training defines tragedy as “an event causing great suffering, destruction, and distress, such as a serious accident, crime, or natural catastrophe.”1 Tragedy can have wide-ranging effects on an individual. Physically, it may manifest as difficulty concentrating, weakened immune response, body aches, and nausea, among other symptoms.2 Emotionally, it can lead to anger, anxiety, depression, and feelings of isolation.3 Other impacts can extend to one’s work, financial situation, and personal and spiritual beliefs.
Some of these impacts are in fact common but can lead to unhealthy coping strategies to deal with the trauma from the incident. Drinking alcohol, missing work, and isolating oneself are just a few ways a person may deal with stress following a tragedy. Such actions may provide temporary relief but can eventually lead to more harm. To address these challenges, the IACP training emphasizes the importance of developing healthy coping strategies over the long term.
Building Resilience
Building the habit of using healthy coping methods increases one’s resilience—the process of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences.4 Resilience is not just an innate ability but a trait that can be developed to cope with stress. One of the program’s trainers, Chief (Ret.) Doug Shoemaker, compares the development of resilience to community trust. Just as community trust is helpful to have in place and strengthened before a critical incident, resilience is helpful to have in place and strengthened before tragedy strikes.
Resilience skills covered in the training include mindfulness, breathing and grounding techniques, distress tolerance, gratitude, and building support systems. One example is the 5-4-3-2-1 Grounding Exercise, which is effective during moments of hyperarousal and stress. It promotes awareness of the present moment and can be practiced anywhere. To practice the exercise, take a few deep breaths and engage with the senses by identifying:
- 5 things that can be seen
- 4 things that can be touched
- 3 things that can be heard
- 2 things that can be smelled
- 1 thing that can be tasted
It is normal for focus and attention to wander while learning these skills, but continual practice will make the process easier.
Post-Traumatic Growth
While tragedy often has negative consequences, it can also bring about positive transformation. Post-traumatic growth is the term for the beneficial change experienced after enduring a significant life event, leading to a renewed perspective and approach to life.5 This growth can unfold over days or even years after the event.
Benefits of post-traumatic growth include
- An increased appreciation for life
- New and enhanced relationships
- Discovery of new possibilities in life
- Personal strength
- Spiritual change
The development of post-traumatic growth is not a linear process and may not happen for everyone. Focusing on the following contributors to post-traumatic growth can help.
While tragedy often has negative consequences, it can also bring about positive transformation… leading to a renewed perspective and approach to life.
Education: Learning how this tragedy has impacted you or challenged your core belief system can lead to insight.
Emotional Regulation: Over time, determining ways to manage negative emotions about the tragedy will lead to more flexible thinking.
Disclosure: Talking about the event and how it impacted you helps you process your thoughts, make sense of the life-changing event, and lead to reflection. Disclosure could take place in therapy, through peer support, or with your support system.
Narrative Development: Rewriting your story so that it reflects the past tragedy and includes ways you can start a new chapter in a meaningful way.
Service: Serving others who have suffered through something like you or others who have no closeness to your life-changing event.
The training concludes with participants creating an individual resilience plan and discussing how to create an agency resilience plan to support one another through tragedy.
The Supporting Growth After Tragedy training program was developed in collaboration with the Education Development Center (EDC) as part of the Bureau of Justice Assistance’s VALOR Initiative. Each training session is co-facilitated by a policing professional and a trained mental health professional. In June, the IACP piloted the training in Alexandria, Virginia, with a group of police officers from around the United States. The IACP also piloted two additional training sessions with the Iowa Department of Public Safety in August and is coordinating with the Metro Nashville, Tennessee, Police Department to host one in Fall 2024.d
Notes:
1Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. (1989), s.v. “tragedy.”
2Ann Pietrangelo, “The Effects of Stress on Your Body,” Healthline, March 21, 2023.
3Dan Brennan, “What Are the Physical and Emotional Signs of Stress?” MedicineNet, January 11, 2021.
4APA Dictionary of Psychology (2018), s.v. “resilience.”
5Richard G. Tedeschi et al., Post-Traumatic Growth: Theory, Research and Applications (New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2018).
Please cite as:
Nora Coyne, “Supporting Growth After Tragedy,” IACP@Work, Police Chief 91, no. 9 (September 2024): 88–89.
