Stress begets distress: the association of job stress with psychological distress among prison police officers

ABSTRACT

In comparison to other professions, prison police officers encounter elevated levels of job-related stress and a greater prevalence of mental health problems. This study seeks to investigate how job-related stress among prison guards related to their psychological distress, a significant indicator of mental health concerns. Taking a resource-based perspective, this study presents a cross-level moderated mediation model to explore the underlying mechanism of the stress-distress relationship. Multi-level and multi-timepoint data were gathered from 306 male prison police officers who were organized into 54 teams within a single prison located in Jiangxi Province, China. The findings indicate that job-related stress among prison police officers is positively associated with their psychological distress. More specifically, job-related stress was found to lead to distress by increasing rumination and decreasing resilience among prison guards. Nevertheless, no evidence was found to support the cross-level moderating effect of perceived organizational support (POS). These findings can contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between job-related stress and mental health, offering valuable insights for the development of psychological interventions within correctional facilities. The study is limited by the uniqueness of the participant group, underscoring the need for future research to validate these findings in diverse populations.

KEYWORDS:

• Job stress
• resilience
• rumination
• perceived organizational support
• psychological distress

Open Scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badge for Open Data. The data are openly accessible at https://osf.io/rpf6a/.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Editage (www.editage.cn) for English language editing. The authors express gratitude to the prison police officers for participating in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical approval

This study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of the ethics committee of The Department of Psychology, Renmin University of China with written informed consent from all subjects. All subjects gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. The protocol was approved by the ethics committee of The Department of Psychology, Renmin University of China(IRB-22-018).

Additional information

Funding

This study is supported by the People’s Psychology Innovation Research Fund of the Department of Psychology at Renmin University of China: [Grant Number No. RXB007].