Police-specific occupational stressors and their psychological and physiological effects among police officers in Johor, Malaysia during COVID-19 pandemic

Police work has become more challenging in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic. Police officers were reportedly experiencing psychological effects such as depression, anxiety and stress due to exposure to occupational stressors during the COVID-19 pandemic leading to concern on the efficiency of policing agencies and nation’ safety during the pandemic. Aims of this study was to assess police-specific occupational stressors and their psychological and physiological effects among Malaysian Police Officers during COVID-19 pandemic. This cross-sectional survey was performed on 233 police officers in Johor, Malaysia. It involved the identification of police-specific operational, organizational and organizational COVID-19 stressor levels using Police- Stress Questionnaire and determination of psychological effects using DASS-21 among police officers. In addition, police-specific organizational COVID-19 stressors were identified through scoping review Nail sampled have been collected among police officers to determine the cortisol levels using ELISA kits. All data was analyzed to investigate the association between police-specific stressors and psychological effects using Chi-Square and logistic regression model. Multiple linear regression was used to determine the relationship between police specific stressors, psychological and physiological effects among police officers during the pandemic. This study has identified four organizational COVID-19 stressors which include fear of COVID-19 infection, lack of PPE, lack of knowledge on the disease and lack of pre-disaster training with lack of PPE. Based on the cut-off value established by this study for Malaysia police officers, it was found that 32.6%, 30.9% and 26.2% of the police officers experienced high level of operational, organizational and organizational COVID-19 stressors. This study has also found that high prevalence of depression (44.2%), anxiety (57.1%) and stress (48.9%) among police officers in Johor during COVID-19 pandemic. Multiple significant associations were found between operational, organizational and organizational COVID-19 stressors with anxiety based on Chi-Square analysis but only several stressors such as shift work, have to prove yourself to the organization and lack of pre-disaster training were found to be predictors for anxiety occurrence among police officers during the pandemic. While anxiety was found to be significantly associated with police-specific stressors, multiple linear regression found that a whole model show that only depression and stress were statistically significant predictor to cortisol changes among police officers where p < .001. In conclusion, this study found that exposure to operational, organizational and organizational COVID-19 stressors can caused high level of psychological effects (depression, anxiety and stress) among police officers in Johor during COVID-19 pandemic however does not significantly affect cortisol changes in police officers. On the other hands, occurrence of depression and stress among police officers can lead cortisol change in police officers which can affect health and well-being among the officers during pandemic. Thus, actions need to be taken by the Royal Malaysia Police which include guideline for police officers in regards to national health emergency and education among police officers in regards to communicable disease as well as implementing system to identify and evaluate officers with high psychological and physiological effects to be put on rest or treatment.

Text FPSK(p) 2024 36 - Declaration Form.pdf Restricted to Repository staff only Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives. Download (887kB) Text FPSK(p) 2024 36 - Full Text.pdf Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives. Download (3MB) Text FPSK(p) 2024 36.pdf Restricted to Repository staff only Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives. Download (4MB)

Actions (login required)

View Item