Page 43 - FOP Magazine March 2019

Mental Health and Wellness Support
Advice from professionals to promote better mental healthcare
We don’t talk enough about how family members suffer the consequences of a police officer who is struggling with mental health.
Family members take on a huge responsibility when someone in their family becomes the police. They become part of a culture and part of the difficulties of being in law enforcement, like the long hours or not having days off or time off when the rest of the family is free. They sacrifice a lot just by having a family member who isn’t physically present as much.
The emotional strain potentially has consequences, unless the family works on communication and deals with the stress of having law enforcement in the family. As we talk about during some of the trainings we give, police officers take their wellness with them wherever they go. And they take their lack of wellness wherever they go. If they take that home, they compromise the well-being of their family members.
Even having dinner with the family on a regular basis can provide the quality time to foster communication and intimacy. Without that, a police officer suffering even a low-to-moderate level of depression or symptoms of trauma can withdraw. With- out that connection, officers can feel resentment, anger and iso- lation. It can be a dark place.
And if an officer is not communicating or working through the
issues, it leaves the rest of the family feeling rejected as well. It also sets communication rules for the family that you don’t talk about problems. You swallow them. Swallowing one’s emotions is exhausting and leads to physical illness and destructive be- haviors. Modeling that behavior to family members may result in them not learning the coping mechanisms to deal with life’s issues.
One of the mistakes police officers make is feeling like they don’t want to bring the job home. But that is not possible. The job impacts physical and emotional well-being. Your silence and ac- tions – or lack of actions – can be mistaken as anger or anything that is usually a negative interpretation.
What we see through talking with police officers who strug- gle emotionally is that so do their family members. It is their job to make sure that the mental consequences of being on this job don’t inadvertently make their family members victims of the job as well.
During the past several years, the utilization of EAP services by Chicago Police Officers and their family members has almost tri- pled. There are requests for more types of service, which we will meet as we acquire more resources that will enable us to adapt to the needs of the police culture, which definitely includes the family.
Family Matters
Dr. Robert Sobo
Director
CPD Professional Counseling Division/EAP
CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ MARCH 2019 43