Critical Incident Stress Management in Law Enforcement
Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) is an essential component to mental health for police officers. This is a growing concept which is founded on evidence-based mental health first aid treatment. “It is a formal, highly structured and professionally recognized process for helping those involved in a critical incident to share their experiences, vent emotions, learn about stress reactions and symptoms and given referral for further help if required” (Cardinal, 2021).
The thing about trauma is that everyone processes it differently. There may be a medical call with a child involved that is wearing the same pajamas that your child has, and it can be traumatic on the responding officer but not traumatic on another officer who is not a parent. The sharing of feelings and addressing officer’s mental health is something that is not widely promoted, causes feelings of embarrassment, and can cost officers specialty assignments and promotions. Officers will let traumatic events fester inside until a dependency for substances, mental breakdown, or other severe action debilitates their life. At this point they hurt people or themselves. Often, they can lose their job which is their identity in may circumstances because it is hard to “turn off” being a police officer. CISM is there for officers to turn to but it is the agency or those who are CISM’s to enact the services.
There are a number of different types of approaches to trauma that CISM utilizes depending on the type and severity of the incident. There is an informal defusing which are typically done within 12 hours of an incident and last no more than an hour (Cardinal, 2021). Debriefings which are more formal and happen typically within 1-3 days after a traumatic incident. Loss sessions which could be used for a line of duty death, police officer suicide, or off-duty sudden death of a department member or retiree. Crisis Management briefings are another tool of CISM that uses a structured format to address people and advise of continued care (Cardinal, 2021). These people are usually all of a particular role who faced a traumatic situation. A critical incident adjustment support group takes on a more inclusive makeup and are for members of a community affected by trauma such as a school shooting or other expanded incident that affected the community.
Critical Incident Stress Managers lend their expertise and time to support those who have faced a traumatic incident on the job. These are often led by people in the same roles but do not have established relationships with those affected. This is important in keeping people’s trust who partake in these emotional interactions. An appeal to CISM activities is that they are confidential. This is actually law in Massachusetts. It lends more credibility to the work of CISM’s. Another aspect is that the CISM activities are generally within rank only unless it is beneficial to have patrol and brass in the same sessions. This would need to be embraced by all partaking in the CISM intervention as people need to be able to speak freely in these settings.
There is a great deal of training, practice, and on-the-job learning to the work of a CISM. The multi-day training, advanced training, and continuing education is nothing compared to the activation of a team without notice to help law enforcement officers involved in a critical incident. The support and trust the team provides is only as good as what is within the team. These are a small group of 7-8 members who drop everything and deploy to help officers in neighboring jurisdictions.
The Massachusetts Municipal Police Training Committee has started to recognize the benefits of the work of CISM’s and now, thanks to a police reform act last year, is in the infancy stages of implementing the CISM framework into municipal police training. When I went through the CISM training in 2019, there were approximately 300 CISM-certified officers in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. This sounds like a robust number, right? Not all of these certified officers were active on the teams around the state. To put it into perspective, there are 351 cities and towns in Massachusetts. Additionally, there are thousands of officers that serve in college, quasi-public, and state law enforcement agencies. There are traumatic events everyday in nearly every community. 300 CISM certified members is not enough. Typically, CISM certified officers that are on teams are on call for a week and it rotates every 4-5 weeks. This is good to prevent burnout, but it still is not enough certified CISM officers in the Commonwealth and it will take years to get the numbers where they should be.
Cardinal, S. (2021). CISM international – critical Incident stress management – what IS CISM? Retrieved April 25, 2021, from https://www.criticalincidentstress.com/what_is_cism_