Citation

Marshall RE, Milligan-Saville JS, Steel Z, Bryant RA, Mitchell PB, Harvey SB. Occup. Med. 2020; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Affiliation

Black Dog Institute, Sydney, Australia.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, Oxford University Press)

DOI

10.1093/occmed/kqaa008

PMID

32040153

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Pre-employment psychological screening to detect psychological vulnerability is common amongst emergency service organizations worldwide, yet the evidence for its ability to predict poor mental health outcomes is limited with published studies looking at post-recruitment research data rather than data collected by the organizations themselves. AIMS: The present study sought to investigate the ability of pre-employment screening to predict later psychological injury-related absenteeism amongst police officers.

METHODS: A nested case-control study using prospective data was conducted. One hundred and fifty police officers with a liability-accepted psychological injury were matched to a control group of 150 psychologically healthy officers. Conditional logistic regression was used to examine associations between Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) scales measuring factors research has shown to predict psychological injury (Neuroticism, Psychoticism, Introversion, Disconstraint and Aggressiveness) and psychopathology (Depression, Anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD]) with subsequent psychological injury.

RESULTS: Contrary to expectations, we were unable to demonstrate any association between validated pre-employment measures of personality and psychopathology with mental health outcomes amongst newly recruited police officers over a 7-year follow-up.

CONCLUSIONS: Other measures may be better able to predict future mental health problems in police recruits.

© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society of Occupational Medicine. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Language: en

Keywords

Health screening; PTSD; mental health; personality; psychiatry; psychology