The development of a UK police traumatic events checklist
| Author | M Soffia,A Peart,BJ Burchell,JK Miller,M Elliott-Davies,CR Brewin |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X211002597 |
| Date | 01 March 2022 |
| Published date | 01 March 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue Articles |
The development of a UK
police traumatic events
checklist
JK Miller
Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
CR Brewin
University College London, London, UK
M Soffia
School of the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Cambridge,
Cambridge, UK
M Elliott-Davies
Royal Holloway University of London, Egham, Surrey, UK
BJ Burchell
University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
A Peart
Dorset Police HQ, Winfrith, Dorset, UK
Abstract
One in five UK police officers suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or Complex
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, yet there is no gold standard measure of trauma
exposure available. This study coded 4,987 exposures reported by 1,531 UK police
officers, using their own language. The resulting checklist describes over 70% of typical
‘worst’ reported traumatic incidents (plus situational factors, including Covid19). The
Police Traumatic Experiences Checklist is a practical tool of value for self-assessment
Corresponding author:
JK Miller, Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge, 16 Mill Lane, Cambridge CB2 1TN, UK.
Email: jkm35@cam.ac.uk
The Police Journal:
Theory, Practice and Principles
ªThe Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/0032258X211002597
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Special Issue: Are we OK? The State of Wellbeing in Policing
2022, Vol. 95(1) 207 –223
208 The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles 95(1)
and peer support, and can facilitate attempts by Occupational Health and management
to improve monitoring and treatment access.
Keywords
Life events, trauma exposure, checklist, police
Introduction
Encountering events that are traumatic is commonplace in UK policing and global law
enforcement (Cartwright and Roach, 2020; Syed et al., 2020; The Royal Foundation,
2020). Experiencing a traumatic event (defined as ‘an extremely threatening or horrific
event or series of events’: Maercker et al., 2013) is required for a diagnosis of post-
traumatic stress disorder. Over 90%of serving officers and staff report exposure to such
events and one in five police officers currently have either Post-Traumatic Stress Dis-
order (PTSD) or Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD: Brewin et al., 2020).
Even in the absence of PTSD, trauma is known to significantly impair cognitive func-
tion, wider health and performance – including vital routine skills such as situational
awareness (Miller, 2016: 532; Miller et al., 2017a, 2017b; Smith et al., 2015). Currently,
however, there is no gold standard by which trauma exposure is measured in UK poli-
cing. Here we report the development of a new measure of trauma exposure based on the
narratives of over 1,500 police officers and staff.
Trauma checklist literature
The most commonly cited trauma checklists were developed for civilians and include the
Life Events Checklist (LEC; Gray et al., 2004; Weathers et al., 1993, 2013, United States
Department of Veteran Affairs, 2020). Originally developed concurrently with the
Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS), the 17 item LEC is essentially a clinical
tool used as part of the treatment pathway. It leads with items such as Natural Disaster
and Fire or Explosion and makes no reference to policing. The Trauma History Ques-
tionnaire by Green (1996) is a civilian psychometric tool, consisting of 24 items asking
about frequency and times of trauma in three specific areas: as a victim of crime-related
events (such as robbery, mugging), general disaster and trauma (such as injury, disaster,
witnessing death), and unwanted physical and sexual experiences. The references to
crime are from a civilian and victim perspective and again the questions do not specif-
ically refer to policing.
Firsts, worsts and mosts
Police-oriented trauma exposure checklists are non-UK based and seem to fall under the
categories of those which reflect ‘firsts, worsts and mosts’ (first trauma exposures early
in career, most severe exposure and most frequent trauma exposures). The lists have
been generated in different ways, including: revisiting established checklists from early
studies, consulting with psychologists and ‘paraphrasing’ qualitative data, but none
2The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles XX(X)
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