Burnout and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in the Police: Educating Officers with the Stilwell TRiM Approach

The mental health and wellbeing of personnel is a major concern for police occupational health departments. This article explains the work of a UK police force in educating officers about the risks of burnout and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Key elements of that work include the Trauma Risk Management (TRiM) tool (developed in the British Army) to assess the risk of PTSD and the use of Visual-Kinesthetic Disassociation (Rewind) therapy for officers who have been identified as badly affected by traumatic work experiences. The force provides a series of workshops on burnout for officers in order to support their mental health and wellbeing. These workshops utilize an innovative multimedia virtual community educational tool (Stilwell) developed by the local university to explore burnout, the use of TRiM, and Rewind. This article explains the use of these techniques and presents evaluative research data showing a positive response to this approach from officers.