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A conference presentation of part of the data reported here was presented at the British Psychological Society Annual Conference in May 2014 and an abstract has been published in their book of abstracts. A doctoral thesis written by the first author containing more detailed discussions of a wider data set is held within the University of Essex library.
We thank the police forces who participated in this study, and specifically the Occupational Health and Welfare staff in each of the participating forces for their support. We thank Matt Johnston, College of Policing, for his enthusiastic support throughout and assistance in recruiting participants. We are also greatly appreciative of Matthew Gould and Neil Greenberg, Royal Navy, for sharing their knowledge regarding TRiM with us and for allowing the inclusion and adaptation of many of their measures. To all those that gave up their time to take part in this study, we are especially grateful.
Police personnel exposed to potentially traumatic events as part of their operational duty may develop psychological problems. A number of UK Police Forces have made use of Trauma Risk Management (TRiM) in response. TRiM is a peer-support process that aims to support employees following trauma, reduce stigma, and encourage help-seeking. Research within military populations has provided preliminary support for the beneficial effects, and importantly no detrimental effects of using TRiM. However, to date there are only a small number of studies that have conducted research into the use of TRiM with police populations. A cross-sectional online questionnaire study compared personnel from 3 forces using TRiM (TRiM group, n = 693)...