Dr Jack Digliani talks about the need for peer support in policing

Exclusive interview from the Police Science Dr. Magazine Issue 1 Browse or download the Magazine for free: www.PoliceScienceDr.com/mag1 What is mental health care provision like for the police? Are psychologists enough to ensure the wellbeing of police officers? Why do we need peer support in policing? What can fellow officers provide that professional psychologists cannot? "The gap was we found many police officers were a bit reluctant to engage in these services due to trust issues, they were worried about confidentiality, but mostly worried about the idea that their therapists would not understand what policing was really like. They didn't think that the therapist would understand what it's like to be a cop." "Peer support fills a niche in the support continuum that cannot be filled in any other way" "The difference is the power of the peer. The difference is a police officer speaking to someone who he or she feels has done the job, walked in their shoes, knows what it's like to confront the stressors of especially modern policing in you know today's tumultuous world. So, this is why I'm a strong advocate of peer support and I've coordinated and supervised and trained peer support teams for several decades and continue to do so and encourage other departments to do so as well." "What we have found in the last several years with the best statistics we have available and again, I'll caution that these statistics are very difficult to develop, is that the number of suicides in the American policing profession has exceeded the number of police officers killed by accident and by felonious assault combined in the last several years."