Officer are expected to be fit and healthy individuals but they find themselves at risk for more conditions and diseases than the ordinary individual. Garbarino and Magnavita (2015) observed officers and their stress levels. They found that healthy officers had a increase likelihood to induce metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is a series of risk factors for dyslipidemia, abdominal adiposity, reduced glucose tolerance and hypertension. It is also associated with cardiovascular disease and cancer. It also found that because of the amount of stress officers have to deal with it they are more likely to become depressed and increase likelihood of metabolic syndrome. High work demands and stress take a toll not only of the officers emotion on psychological health but only on their physical health. The severe amount of stress that officers have to go through actually causes them their bodies to break down and more to likely to get life threatening disorders even though they have a healthy body and diet. This can put an added stress on the family since now they have to worry about paying medical fees for the officer which can bring added stress. Also because the stress can be so physically demanding, an officer may not want to take the extra time and fix his or her marriage …show more content…
The high levels of stress and work demands put a emotional, psychological, and physiological burden the officer and his or her family. The added trauma that the officer experiences also put a burden that they may feel like they can’t express for fear of being seen as weak or “not handling the job”. The officer may not be able to handle the added stress of home life and drive themselves apart from their family or even worse escalate to physical violence. There is many therapies out there that have helped many officers with PTSD and to deal with stress. There is also a discovery of change of attitudes within officers. Instead of the strong, authoritative officer, the understanding and compassionate officer works not only better under stress but in dealing with trauma