Protecting the Protectors: Moral Injury, Coping Styles, and Mental Health of UK Police Officers and Staff Investigating Child Sexual Abuse Material
Paul Conway, Theresa Redmond, Samantha Lundrigan, Deanna Davy, Simon Bailey, Peter Lee · 2024
Read Protecting the Protectors: Moral Injury, Coping Styles, and Mental Health of UK Police Officers and Staff Investigating Child Sexual Abuse Material by Paul Conway, Theresa Redmond, Samantha Lundrigan, Deanna Davy, Simon Bailey, Peter Lee (2024) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-11922302.txt.
Description
Paul Conway and five co-authors survey the mental health of UK police who investigate child sexual abuse material. Their 2024 study covers 661 officers and staff in this grim specialty. Depression and anxiety ran far above general levels, while post-traumatic stress did not, a pattern that points away from simple exposure as the whole story.
What predicted suffering most was moral injury, above all the feeling of being betrayed by the institution itself. Exposure to the material and contact with victims also hurt, but measurably less. Feeling successful and supported protected strongly. Coping habits split the same way: self-blame, rumination, and withdrawal tracked with worse health, while positive refocusing, distraction, and social support tracked with better. The authors argue the remedy is largely organizational. Support and fairness inside the force may matter more than shielding staff from the material, which the job makes impossible.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Paul Conway, Theresa Redmond, Samantha Lundrigan, Deanna Davy, Simon Bailey, Peter Lee |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2024 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 67 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |