Work and health outcomes among police officers: The mediating role of police cynicism and engagement.

This study examined the relationship between personality variables (Type A), job demands and job resources, and police cynicism and engagement, and also examined the mediating role of cynicism and work engagement in predicting both work and health related outcomes among police officers. The participants were 150 Norwegian police officers, and data were collected using questionnaires. Results showed that Type A behavior was related to both cynicism and engagement. As predicted, both job demands and lack of job resources were related to cynicism, and job resources were positively related to engagement. A series of regression analyses indicated direct relationships between Type A behavior, job demands and health complaints with no mediating effect of cynicism. Work engagement partially mediated the effects of individual characteristics, job demands and job resources on organizational commitment and self-efficacy. However, direct links between demands and resources and organizational commitment were also found, as well as direct links between Type A behavior, work demands and self-efficacy. The implications of work engagement for organizations were discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Work stressors, role-based performance, and the moderating influence of organizational support.

As a test of the 2-dimensional model of work stressors, the present study proposed differential relationships between challenge stressors and hindrance stressors and role-based performance, which were expected to be moderated by organizational support. In a sample of 215 employees across 61 offices of a state agency, the authors obtained a positive relationship between challenge stressors and role-based performance and a negative relationship between hindrance stressors and role-based performance. In addition, organizational support moderated the relationship between challenge stressors and role-based performance but did not moderate the relationship between hindrance stressors and role-based performance. This suggests that organizations would benefit from increasing challenges in the workplace as long as they are supportive of employees and removing hindrances. Further implications for organizational theory and practice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relationships of role stressors with organizational citizenship behavior: A meta-analysis.

Several quantitative reviews have documented the negative relationships that role stressors have with task performance. Surprisingly, much less attention has been directed at the impact of role stressors on other aspects of job performance, such as organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). The goal of this study was to therefore estimate the overall relationships of role stressors (i.e., role ambiguity, conflict, and overload) with OCB. A meta-analysis of 42 existing studies indicated that role ambiguity and role conflict were negatively related to OCB and that these relationships were moderated by the target of OCB, type of organization, OCB rating source, and publication status. As expected, role conflict had a stronger negative relationship with OCB than it did with task performance. Finally, we found support for a path model in which job satisfaction mediated relationships of role stressors with OCB and for a positive direct relationship between role overload and OCB. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Breaking the mold: The impact of working in a gender-congruent versus gender-incongruent role on self-reported sources of stress, organizational commitment, and health in U.K. universities.

We present an analysis of archive data collected using the ASSET (Cartwright & Cooper, 2002) from a stratified sample of employees (N = 2,005) working in higher education institutions in the United Kingdom in 2003. We hypothesized that employees working in gender-incongruent roles would report higher levels of work-related stress, poorer health, and lower organizational commitment compared with those working in gender-congruent roles. Interpreted in accordance with the role strain hypotheses, we found that women working in gender-incongruent roles reported significantly higher (p > .01) levels of stress, higher levels of minor ill-health problems, and lower levels of perceived commitment from their organizations compared with all other employees. Conversely, men who worked in gender-incongruent roles often reported the lowest levels of stress. The implications of these findings are discussed with reference to women’s progression in U.K. higher education. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sleeping problems and health behaviors as mediators between organizational justice and health.

The aim of this longitudinal cohort study was to investigate whether sleeping problems and health behaviors (smoking, alcohol consumption, and sedentary lifestyle) mediate the association between organizational justice and employee health. Health indicators were minor psychiatric morbidity, as assessed by the General Health Questionnaire (U. Werneke, D. P. Goldberg, 1. Yalcin, & B. T. Ustun, 2000), and poor self-rated health status. The results of logistic regression analysis of data for 416 male and 3,357 female hospital employees working during the 1998-2000 period in 10 Finnish hospitals suggest that sleeping problems are one of the underlying factors causing the adverse health effects of low organizational justice at work. No support for a mediating role of health behaviors between low organizational justice and health problems was obtained. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The shift to community mental health as an organizational phenomenon.

Mental health professionals often fail to recognize organizational phenomena which are significant to delivery of services. A current shift in service delivery is the move away from residential care to prevention programs. Rather than seeing this as the result of "new discoveries", the shift is viewed as an outcome of organizational developments. It is suggested that community mental health programs are produced by an institution having resources in excess of stabilized demands for treatment technology. This process of organizational diversification may have the surprising result of creating greater tendencies toward custodial treatment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Gender differences in combat-related stressors and their association with postdeployment mental health in a nationally representative sample of U.S. OEF/OIF veterans.

Though the broader literature suggests that women may be more vulnerable to the effects of trauma exposure, most available studies on combat trauma have relied on samples in which women's combat exposure is limited and analyses that do not directly address gender differences in associations between combat exposure and postdeployment mental health. Female service members' increased exposure to combat in Afghanistan and Iraq provides a unique opportunity to evaluate gender differences in different dimensions of combat-related stress and associated consequence for postdeployment mental health. The current study addressed these research questions in a representative sample of female and male U.S. veterans who had returned from deployment to Afghanistan or Iraq within the previous year. As expected, women reported slightly less exposure than men to most combat-related stressors, but higher exposure to other stressors (i.e., prior life stress, deployment sexual harassment). No gender differences were observed in reports of perceived threat in the war zone. Though it was hypothesized that combat-related stressors would demonstrate stronger negative associations with postdeployment mental health for women, only one of 16 stressor × gender interactions achieved statistical significance and an evaluation of the clinical significance of these interactions revealed that effects were trivial. Results suggest that female Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom service members may be as resilient to combat-related stress as men. Future research is needed to evaluate gender differences in the longer-term effects of combat exposure. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developing community capacity to treat post-deployment mental health problems: A public health initiative.

Meeting the mental health needs of Veterans returning from recent deployment requires the coordinated effort of partnerships across Department of Defense (DoD), Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and state and local communities. Although the proportion of Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who have accessed VA health care has grown, the majority of these new combat Veterans have yet to present for VA care. The stigma associated with reporting a deployment-related mental health problem may be one factor in this, but access to treatment may also be an important concern among the one third of American Veterans who live in rural or highly rural areas. As these Veterans are more likely to present to a primary care, faith-based or mental health provider in their own community, partnerships between community providers, DoD, and VA are of critical importance in ensuring appropriate care, regardless of treatment setting. In an effort to improve services and access to services, especially to rural Veterans, an educational public health initiative was created to educate community providers about military culture, deployment-related mental health issues, VA resources, and evidence-based treatments. We describe the development, dissemination and evaluation of this initiative, as well as lessons learned for future similar endeavors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of two reliable and valid measures of stressors in policing: The operational and organizational police stress questionnaires.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 14(3) of International Journal of Stress Management (see record 2007-12374-002). The authors of this paper carried out this research on behalf of the Government of Canada, and, as such the copyright in this paper belongs to the Crown, that is to the Canadian government. Non-exclusive permission is granted to requesters to translate and to reproduce this content in any form provided that its source, the authors, and the Defence R&D Canada are clearly indicated.] This article describes the development and validation of the Operational Police Stress Questionnaire (PSQ-Op) and the Organizational Police Stress Questionnaire (PSQ-Org). In Study 1, a series of focus groups were used to elicit the most common stressors associated with policing. During this study, it became apparent that officers separated their stressors into two general categories: operational and organizational. In the following three studies, the PSQ-Op and PSQ-Org were assessed for reliability and validity. The findings showed that both forms of the PSQ were reliable and demonstrated construct validity (correlations between perceived stress and frequency), discriminant validity (compared with general life stressors), and concurrent validity (compared with job satisfaction measures). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reducing the adverse consequences of workplace aggression and violence: The buffering effects of organizational support.

This study examined the buffering effects of 2 types of organizational support--instrumental and informational--on the relationships between workplace violence/aggression and both personal and organizational outcomes. Based on data from 225 employees in a health care setting, a series of moderated multiple regression analyses demonstrated that organizational support moderated the effects of physical violence, vicariously experienced violence, and psychological aggression on emotional well-being, somatic health, and job-related affect, but not on fear of future workplace violence and job neglect. These findings have implications for both research and intervention related to workplace violence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Marital psychological and physical aggression and children's mental and physical health: Direct, mediated, and moderated effects.

Relations between marital aggression (psychological and physical) and children's health were examined. Children's emotional insecurity was assessed as a mediator of these relations, with distinctions made between marital aggression against mothers and fathers and ethnicity (African American or European American), socioeconomic status, and child gender examined as moderators of effects. Participants were 251 community-recruited families, with multiple reporters of each construct. Aggression against either parent yielded similar effects for children. Children's emotional insecurity mediated the relation between marital aggression and children's internalizing, externalizing, and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms. No differences were found in these pathways for African American and European American families or as a function of socioeconomic status or child gender. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Infants' meaning-making and the development of mental health problems.

We argue that infant meaning-making processes are a central mechanism governing both typical and pathological outcomes. Infants, as open dynamic systems, must constantly garner information to increase their complexity and coherence. They fulfill this demand by making nonverbal “meaning”—affects, movements, representations—about themselves in relation to the world and themselves into a “biopsychosocial state of consciousness,” which shapes their ongoing engagement with the world. We focus on the operation of the infant–adult communication system, a dyadic, mutually regulated system that scaffolds infants' engagement with the world of people, things, and themselves, and consequently their meaning-making. We argue that infant mental health problems emerge when the meanings infants make in the moment, which increase their complexity and coherence and may be adaptive in the short run, selectively limit their subsequent engagement with the world and, in turn, the growth of their state of consciousness in the long run. When chronic and iterative, these altered meanings can interfere with infants' successful development and heighten their vulnerability to pathological outcomes. Cultural variations in meaning-making and implications for clinical practice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

New directions in children's mental health policy: Psychology's role.

The policies that influence the practice of children's mental health affect psychologists across the nation. Major recent events have brought this topic to the attention of national policymakers at the highest level and have created opportunities for psychologists to present information regarding recent scientific advances in the treatment of childhood disorders and to be involved in the development of solutions to address the needs of our nation's children. This article reviews these recent events, summarizes current knowledge in the field, and addresses specific issues and critical gaps in current national policies on children's mental health. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Child temperament moderates the impact of parental separation on adolescent mental health: The trails study.

The potential effect of parental separation during early adolescence on adolescent externalizing and internalizing problems was investigated in a longitudinal sample of adolescents (n = 1274; mean age = 16.27; 52.3% girls). Pre-separation mental health problems were controlled for. Building on a large number of studies that overall showed a small effect of parental separation, it was argued that separation may only or especially have an effect under certain conditions. It was examined whether child temperament (effortful control and fearfulness) moderates the impact of parental separation on specific mental health domains. Hypotheses were derived from a goal-framing theory, with a focus on goals related to satisfying the need for autonomy and the need to belong. Controlling for the overlap between the outcome domains, we found that parental separation led to an increase in externalizing problems but not internalizing problems when interactions with child temperament were ignored. Moreover, child temperament moderated the impact of parental separation, in that it was only related to increased externalizing problems for children low on effortful control, whereas it was only related to increased internalizing problems for children high on fearfulness. The results indicate that person-environment interactions are important for understanding the development of mental health problems and that these interactions can be domain-specific. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mental health of Somali adolescent refugees: The role of trauma, stress, and perceived discrimination.

The primary purpose of this study was to examine relations between trauma exposure, post-resettlement stressors, perceived discrimination, and mental health symptoms in Somali adolescent refugees resettled in the U.S. Participants were English-speaking Somali adolescent refugees between the ages of 11 and 20 (N = 135) who had resettled in the U.S. Participants were administered an interview battery comprising self-report instruments that included the UCLA Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Index, the War Trauma Screening Scale, the Every Day Discrimination scale, the Adolescent Post-War Adversities Scale, and the Acculturative Hassles Inventory. Results indicated that cumulative trauma was related to PTSD and depression symptoms. Further, post-resettlement stressors, acculturative stressors, and perceived discrimination were also associated with greater PTSD symptoms after accounting for trauma, demographic, and immigration variables. Number of years since resettlement in the US and perceived discrimination were significantly related to depressive symptoms, after accounting for trauma, demographic, and immigration variables. Further research elucidating the relations between post-resettlement stressors, discrimination, and mental health of refugee adolescents may inform intervention development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A behavior genetic investigation of adolescent motherhood and offspring mental health problems.

The present study examines the relations between adolescent motherhood and children's behavior, substance use, and internalizing problems in a sample of 1,368 children of 712 female twins from Australia. Adolescent motherhood remained significantly associated with all mental health problems, even when using a quasiexperimental design capable of controlling for genetic and environmental confounds. However, the relation between adolescent motherhood and offspring behavior problems and substance use was partially confounded by family background variables that influence both generations. The results are consistent with a causal relation between adolescent motherhood and offspring mental health problems, and they highlight the usefulness of behavior genetic designs when examining putative environmental risks for the development of psychopathology. The generalizability of these results to the United States, which has a higher adolescent birth rate, is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The impact of situational constraints, role stressors, and commitment on employee altruism.

This study investigated relations between 3 work-related stressors (role ambiguity, role conflict, and organizational constraints) and altruistic behavior in the workplace. It was predicted that each stressor would be negatively related to altruism and that these relations would be moderated by affective commitment (AC). Data from 144 incumbent-supervisor dyads revealed that all 3 stressors; were weakly and negatively related to altruism. Two of these relationships were moderated by AC, although not as predicted. Organizational constraints were positively related to altruism among those reporting high levels of AC but negatively related among those reporting low levels of AC. The pattern was exactly opposite for role conflict. Implications of these findings are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of physical health functioning, mental health, and sociodemographic factors in determining the intensity of mental health care use among primary care medical patients.

The present study examined sociodemographic and attitudinal predisposing factors (gender, age, marital status, health insurance, household income, attitudes about mental health care), and need/illness variables (depression severity, physical and mental health functional status) as predictors of past-year mental health care use intensity (i.e., visit counts) and use/nonuse. The sample included 283 adult primary care patients from the Midwestern United States in a cross-sectional study. Nonlinear regression models demonstrated that past-year treatment use intensity was significantly associated with both married status and poorer physical health functioning, while the use (vs. nonuse) of treatment was associated with depression severity. A sociodemographic and attitudinal multivariate predictor model only explained 5% of the variance in treatment use intensity, but a need/illness model significantly contributed an additional 23% variance. Poorer physical health functioning was significant in predicting treatment use intensity, while depression severity was significant in predicting the use (vs. nonuse) of treatment. Results demonstrate the particular importance of physical health problems in determining the intensity of mental health care use, and depression severity in determining the use/nonuse of treatment, notwithstanding the restricted sociodemographic contour of the sample. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of widowhood on physical and mental health, health behaviors, and health outcomes: The Women's Health Initiative.

This study examined whether widowhood was associated with physical and mental health, health behaviors, and health outcomes using a cross-sectional (N=72,247) and prospective (N=55,724) design in women aged 50-79 years participating in the Women's Health Initiative observational study (85.4% White). At baseline, married women reported better physical and mental health and generally better health behaviors than widowed women. Whereas women who remained married over the 3-year period showed stability in mental health, recent widows experienced marked impairments and longer term widows showed stability or slight improvements. Both groups of widows reported more unintentional weight loss over the 3-year period. Changes in physical health and health behaviors were inconsistent, with generally small effect sizes. Findings underscore the resilience of older women and their capacity to reestablish connections, but point to the need for services that strengthen social support among women who have difficulty during this transition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Why bother with beliefs? Examining relationships between race/ethnicity, parental beliefs about causes of child problems, and mental health service use.

In this study, the authors examined the role of parental beliefs about the causes of child problems in predicting later mental health service use in a large, diverse population of at-risk youths. Study hypotheses were that parental beliefs consistent with biopsychosocial causes would be associated with later mental health service use; sociological, spiritual, or nature disharmony etiologies would be negatively associated with service use; and beliefs would partially mediate the relationship between race/ethnicity and service use. Of the 5 biopsychosocial beliefs, 2 were positively related to later mental health service use. Unexpectedly, of the 6 parental beliefs related to sociological, spiritual, or nature disharmony etiologies, only 1 was negatively associated with later service use patterns. Parental endorsement of etiologies relating to physical causes, relational issues, trauma, and prejudice was found to partially mediate the relationship between race/ethnicity and service use for Asian/Pacific Islander American and Latino youths. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)