It’s Mental Health Awareness Week. Three academics – from the University of Portsmouth, Dr Risto Talas and Professor Mark Button, and Dr Mark Doyle, of Solent University – write on mental health and well-being among security operatives in the UK.
Research has demonstrated that security operatives can experience multiple stressful and violent experiences in the course of their employment (Imamura et al., 2016). Evidence has demonstrated that stressful and violent exposures can have a significant negative impact on the mental health and wellbeing of these individuals both in terms of general mental health (Pescosolido, 2008) and levels of PTSD (Shevlin and Adamson, 2005).