Risk and Resiliency of Royal Canadian Mounted Police Cadets Completing Training
Despite the higher prevalence of mental health disorders among serving Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) relative to the general population, RCMP Cadets begin training with lower putative risk and greater perceived resilience than young adults in the general population. The current study was designed to assess the effectiveness of the Cadet training program—the paramilitary training RCMP recruits complete to become serving RCMP—in strengthening RCMP Cadets’ mental health by examining putative risk and resilience factors among post-training/pre-deployment Cadets. Participants had significantly lower scores on all putative risk variables with the exception of state anger, and significantly higher scores on perceived resilience, at post-training/pre-deployment compared to pre-training. Participants also had significantly lower scores on all putative risk variables, and significantly higher scores on perceived resilience, compared to scores from young adult control samples. These uncontrolled pilot findings suggest the Cadet training program may be beneficial for RCMP Cadets’ mental health and provide further evidence that the nature of policing, rather than individual differences in risk and resilience, likely explain serving RCMP’s relatively higher prevalence of mental health disorders.
Why was the study done?
Despite the higher prevalence of mental health disorders among serving Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) relative to the general population, RCMP Cadets begin training with lower putative risk and greater perceived resilience than young adults in the general population. The current study was designed to assess the effectiveness of the Cadet training program (CTP) —the paramilitary training RCMP recruits complete to become serving RCMP—in strengthening RCMP Cadets’ mental health by examining putative risk and resilience factors among post-training/pre-deployment Cadets.
What was done in the study?
The current research draws on data from the larger, 10-year RCMP Study, a part of a Federal Framework on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Post-training/pre-deployment Cadets (n=492; 70.5% men) completed self-report measures of several putative risk variables (i.e., anxiety sensitivity, fear of negative evaluation, pain anxiety, illness and injury sensitivity, intolerance of uncertainty, and state anger) and perceived resilience. Cadets’ post-training/pre-deployment scores were compared to their pre-training scores on the same measures, and to scores from Canadian, American, Australian, and European young adult control samples.
What did we find out?
Results indicate that, just before deployment, RCMP Cadets have lower scores on multiple putative risk variables and higher scores on resilience than young adults in the general population and compared to their own scores prior to commencing the CTP. RCMP Cadets at post-training/pre-deployment appear less vulnerable to developing mental health challenges than the general population; accordingly, the higher prevalence of mental health challenges among serving RCMP may at least partially be explained by the nature of police work. The current results also suggest the CTP is not detrimental to the mental health of RCMP Cadets, and may be beneficial, as Cadets participating in the RCMP Study evidenced lesser mental health risk and greater resiliency after the training.
Original Study
Khoury, J. M. B., Teckchandani, T. A., Shields, R. E., Nisbet, J., Jamshidi, L., Stewart, S. H., Asmundson, G. J. G., Afifi, T. O., Krätzig, G. P., Sauer-Zavala, S., & Carleton, R. N. (2024). Putative Risk and Resiliency Factors Among Royal Canadian Mounted Police Cadets Before and After the Cadet Training Program. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, 39(3), 640–652. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-024-09686-7
The RCMP Study is funded by support from the RCMP, the Government of Canada, and the Ministry of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. R. N. Carleton is supported by the Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Arts at The University of Regina, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Canada Ministry of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and a Medavie Foundation Project Grant. T. O. Afifi is supported by a Tier I Canada Research Chair in Childhood Adversity and Resilience. S. H. Stewart is supported by a Tier I Canada Research Chair in Addictions and Mental Health. L. M. Lix is supported by a Tier I Canada Research Chair in Methods for Electronic Health Data Quality. The development, analyses, and distribution of the current article was made possible by a generous and much-appreciated grant from the Medavie Foundation.
The original wording of the study was changed and condensed for the current research summary.