Risk and Resiliency of Royal Canadian Mounted Police Cadets Completing Training
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—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 Cadet Training Program. 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 Cadet Training Program 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.
To cite this article: 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
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-024-09686-7
