ArticleEpidemiology and psychiatric sciences2021
The prevalence of hazardous and harmful drinking in the UK Police Service, and their co-occurrence with job strain and mental health problems.
Article in Epidemiology and psychiatric sciences, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 21 citations in OpenAlex.
- A multisite feasibility randomized clinical trial of mindfulness-based resilience training for aggression, stress, and health in law enforcement officers.BMC complementary medicine and therapies · 2024Trial
- Coping strategies and post traumatic stress injury symptoms differ between tactical and frontline police officers: implications for health and public safety.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Coping under pressure: police-specific stressors and mental health in Catalonia police forces.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Sickness absence and associations with sociodemographic factors, health risk behaviours, occupational stressors and adverse mental health in 40,343 UK police employees.Epidemiology and psychiatric sciences · 2024Article
- A comparison of probable post-traumatic stress disorder and alcohol consumption among active female members of the UK Police Service and UK Armed Forces.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2023Article
- Industry-specific prevalence and gender disparity of common mental health problems in the UK: A national repetitive cross-sectional study.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
- Excessive Drinking Among Men Who Have Sex With Men Recruited From Web-Based Resources: Cross-sectional Questionnaire Study.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2022Article
- Prevalence of recurrent aphthous stomatitis, oral submucosal fibrosis and oral leukoplakia in doctor/nurse and police officer population.BMC oral health · 2022Article
- A latent class analysis of health risk behaviours in the UK Police Service and their associations with mental health and job strain.BMC psychiatry · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
aimsDue to the stressful nature of policing, police employees are at risk of mental health problems and problematic alcohol use. We aim to determine the prevalence of hazardous and harmful alcohol use in the UK Police Service, and to explore the associations with job strain and mental health problems.
methodsCross-sectional data from the Airwave Health Monitoring Study (N = 40 986) included measures of alcohol consumption (total units in past week), mental health (depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD]) and job strain. The associations between mental health and job strain with alcohol consumption (i.e. abstinence, low-risk [<14 units per week, reference group], hazardous [>14 to 35 units for women, >14 to 50 units for men], harmful [>35 units for women, >50 units for men]), were analysed using multinomial logistic regressions, adjusting for potential confounders (i.e. age, gender, ethnicity, marital status, children under 18, income and smoking status).
resultsA total of 32.6% of police employees reported hazardous drinking, with 3.0% drinking at harmful levels. Compared to those without a mental health problem, police employees with depression, anxiety or PTSD were twice as likely to be harmful drinkers and were also 1.3 times more likely to report abstinence. Those reporting low strain (reference group) were more likely to drink hazardously compared to those reporting high strain, which was statistically moderated by mental health. When the sample was stratified by mental health status, the association between low strain (compared to all other categories) and hazardous drinking, was significant only in those without a mental health problem.
conclusionsThese findings indicate that police employees may be an occupational group at risk of alcohol harm, with one-third drinking hazardously. The J-shaped relationship between mental health and alcohol use highlights a need for an integration of mental health and alcohol services, tailored for the UK Police Service.
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