Exploring the Patient Health Questionnaire-15 as a screening tool for wellness in law enforcement

ABSTRACT

Law enforcement officers globally face unique stressors and heightened morbidity compared to the general population. This study emerged as part of an initiative to provide data needed to design policies and programs that address the stressors faced by officers and to investigate how these factors may affect officer performance. As part of this initiative, a nationally representative cohort of officers (n = 2,867, mean age 41) answered questions regarding their physical and mental health. Measurements at one time point included the Patient Health Questionnaire-15 (PHQ-15) to query somatic symptoms and additional wellness measures assessing sleep and exhaustion, stress, mental health, and suicidality. We identified strong and significant associations between the PHQ-15 in the expected directions with all five wellness measures. Significant associations indicate that the PHQ-15, when used as a self-administered screening tool, will increase awareness of physical and mental symptoms in officers that might otherwise go unnoticed.

KEYWORDS:

• Law enforcement
• physical health
• PHQ-15
• nationally representative
• somatization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Formatted per Kroenke et al. (2002). The PHQ-15: Validity of a New Measure for Evaluating the Severity of Somatic Symptoms. Psychosomatic Medicine, 64(2). pp. 258–266. https://doi.org/10.1097/00006842–200203000–00008.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the National Institute of Justice [2018-R2-CX-0026]

Notes on contributors

Sandra L. Ramey

Sandra L. Ramey, Ph.D., RN, is an Associate Professor Emeritus at the University of Iowa. She has served as faculty in the College of Nursing and the College of Public Health since 2006. Prior to this appointment, Dr. Ramey was an Assistant Professor at Marquette University for 3 years. She has conducted research for 24 years within law enforcement looking at stress, resilience, cardiovascular disease, and risk factors and has been instrumental in incorporating this information into police academy curricula. Over the course of her career, Dr. Ramey has published more than 30 papers and book chapters in high impact journals and was invited to testify for the President’s Taskforce for 21^st Century Policing in 2015. She earned her PhD in 2003 from Iowa State University. Her dissertation was one of the largest studies conducted in law enforcement, and she has continued to work with COPS and IACP to disseminate important health information to officers across the country.

Madeleine M. Liotta

Madeleine Liotta, MPH, is a Senior Research Associate I at NORC at the University of Chicago. Madeleine brings five years of interdisciplinary experience in public health research, clinical applications, and health education. Her research interests include disaster mortality surveillance, interpersonal violence prevention, mental health awareness, and public health preparedness. She received her Master of Public Health in 2020 from New York University with a concentration Global Public Health. Her work has been featured previously in Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice and the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice.

Ji Eun Park

Ji Eun Park, Ph.D., is a Research Methodologist III at NORC at the University of Chicago. Ji Eun has nine years of experience in data analysis and research design and is an expert in factor analysis, latent class analysis, psychometrics methods, and evaluation studies that use randomized controlled trials and social network data. She received her Ph.D. in 2020 from the University of Pennsylvania.

Meghan S. O’Leary

Meghan O’Leary, MPP, is a Senior Research Associate II in the Public Health Research Department at NORC at the University of Chicago. Her research has focused on health equity, the social determinants of health, vulnerable and minority populations, and women’s health. O’Leary received her Master of Public Policy in 2021 from the University of Michigan with a concentration in Public Policy Analysis Methods. Her work has been featured previously in Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice.

Elizabeth A. Mumford

Elizabeth A. Mumford, Ph.D., a social epidemiologist, conducts the OSAW Initiative, a national study of the safety and wellness of law enforcement officers, and leads evaluation studies of programs to prevent interpersonal violence and build resilience. Elizabeth is also trained as a trainer and a practitioner of MindFitness, HeartMath, and Somatic Experience Practices – all of which are trauma-informed approaches to building recovery and resilience.