Mental Health Issues among Police Officer
Shah Alam Afreen
Police organization is one of the largest organizations in India. The major functions of Police are to protect the life and property of citizens, to maintain peace and harmony in the society and to help the justice system in controlling crime. It is only possible when a police officer is mentally healthy but the fact is that the police officers tackle various dangerous situations that can negatively affect their mental health. By keeping in mind, the aim of the present study is to find out the relation of family and economic status and the mental health of the Police officers. Mental health is an important component of the total positive health and it is closely related to the physiological and physical dynamics of the human body and that is why WHO has rightly pointed out that there is no health without mental health. According to WHO, mental health shapes the well-being of an individual even help them to realize his /her own potentialities and help to cope up with the normal stresses of life. For the present study 50 police officers of Kishanganj, Bihar was selected randomly and a mental health questionnaire was administered. Descriptive statistics and Pearson Correlation were used to analyse data. Results revealed that police officers have a statistically significant negative correlation of mental health with family type and statistically significant positive correlation of mental health with salary. It means that the police officer needs proper care and psychological intervention like counselling and therapy for better mental health.
Police work is one of the largest stressful works as there are no defined working hours. They always encounter events such as social evils, murders, rapes, robbery, criminals, pressure from political people, workload and less time with family. There are some research studies that suggest that a police officer is killed by more mental health issues than they are by criminals. These duties of police officers are only possible when a police officer is mentally healthy. The working conditions ofthe policemen are crawling in many aspects. The social life, human, training deficient, lack of modern sources, task pressures, and behaviour of pubic towards them bad enough to affect their frustration and surrounding environment which is degraded and pervert.
The major functions of the police are to the maintenance of law and order of the society, prevention and detection of crimes in the country. They protect the life, freedom, and property of the people. The police personnel encounters physical dangers anytime and, if necessary, they risk their lives in protecting our society at any cost, due to which they face stress, depression worry, stable in life.
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