Practice Profile: Mindfulness Training for Law Enforcement to Reduce Occupational Impact

This practice encompasses a wellness intervention that seeks to reduce the negative impact of stress on police officers, to improve their mental health outcomes. The practice is rated Effective for improving measures of depression, anxiety, and burnout. The practice is rated Ineffective for improving measures of sleep quality.

Practice Goals

Policing can be a stressful occupation and lead to mental health challenges for officers (Haugen et al. 2017; Jetelina et al. 2020). There are interventions designed to help officers overcome these challenges and reduce the negative impact of their jobs on their mental health. One such intervention is mindfulness training that employs various strategies to build an individual’s awareness of their internal and external experiences in a given moment (Baer 2003). The goal is to improve officers’ physical and mental health outcomes.

Target Population/Practice Components

Mindfulness interventions for law enforcement officers teach strategies to manage stressors such as critical incidents, job dissatisfaction, and public scrutiny, as well as interpersonal and behavioral challenges that stem from their work (Christopher et al. 2018). Each program has unique components and may vary in length. Generally, sessions are offered over six to eight weeks and are usually two hours per session with one longer session throughout the program. Components of mindfulness interventions may include attention regulation, body awareness, emotion regulation, mindfulness meditation to change one’s perspective of oneself (Navarrete et al. 2022), cognitive education (Krick and Felfe 2020), managing police-related stress (Christopher et al. 2018), values clarification, positive psychology (Trombka et al. 2021), and informal mindfulness practices that can be integrated into police work such as “drop-ins” to present-moment experiences, brief breath manipulations, and cultivating “mindful pauses” (Grupe et al. 2021). Sessions are instructional and involve active participation with exercises such as body scanning, walking meditation, mindful movement (adapted yoga or tai chi), mindful eating, small group discussions of participants’ experiences with the exercises, guided imagery, or use of silence (Christopher et al. 2018; Trombka et al. 2021).

Mindfulness programs may also focus on breathwork and techniques for compassion training and can be adapted to meet the cultural needs of law enforcement officers.

These sources were used in the development of the practice profile:

These sources were used in the development of the practice profile:

Baer, Ruth. 2003. “Mindfulness Training as a Clinical Intervention: A Conceptual and Empirical Review.” Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice 10(2):125–43

Christopher, Michael S., Matthew Hunsinger, Lt. Richard J. Goerling, Sarah Bowen, Brant S. Rogers, Cynthia R. Gross, Eli Dapolonia, and Jens C. Pruessner. 2018. “Mindfulness-Based Resilience Training to Reduce Health Risk, Stress Reactivity, and Aggression among Law Enforcement Officers: A Feasibility and Preliminary Efficacy Trial.” Psychiatry Research 264:104–15.

Grupe, Daniel W., Jonah L. Stoller, Carmen Alonso, Chad McGehee, Chris Smith, Jeanette A. Mumford, Melissa A. Rosenkranz, and Richard J Davidson. 2021. “The Impact of Mindfulness Training on Police Officer Stress, Mental Health, and Salivary Cortisol Levels.” Frontiers in Psychology 12: 720–53.

Haugen, Peter T., Aileen M. McCrillis, Geert E. Smid, and Mirjam J. Nijdam. 2017. “Mental Health Stigma and Barriers to Mental Health Care for First Responders: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” Journal of Psychiatric Research 94: 218–29.

Jetelina, Katelyn K., Rebecca J. Molsberry, Jennifer R. Gonzalez, Alaina M. Beauchamp, and Trina Hall. 2020. “Prevalence of Mental Illness and Mental Health Care Use Among Police Officers.” JAMA Network Open 3(10):e2019658.

Krick, Annika, and Jörg Felfe. 2020. “Who Benefits from Mindfulness? The Moderating Role of Personality and Social Norms for the Effectiveness on Psychological and Physiological Outcomes Among Police Officers.” Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 25(2):99–112.

Navarrete, Jaime, Miguel Ángel García-Salvador, Ausiàs Cebolla, and Rosa Baños. 2022. “Impact of Mindfulness Training on Spanish Police Officers’ Mental and Emotional Health: A Non-Randomized Pilot Study.” Mindfulness 13:695–711.

Trombka, Marcelo, Marcelo Demarzo, Daniel Campos, Sonia B. Antonio, Karen Cicuto, Ana L Walcher, Javier García-Campayo, Zev Schuman-Olivier, and Neusa S. Rocha. 2021. “Mindfulness Training Improves Quality of Life and Reduces Depression and Anxiety Symptoms Among Police Officers: Results From The POLICE Study-A Multicenter Randomized Controlled Trial.” Frontiers in Psychiatry 12:624876.