Around 20 to 50 million people are injured as a result of a road traffic accident (RTA) each year throughout the world. In the United Kingdom there have been considerable efforts made to review the ...assessment of whiplash claimants following RTAs due to the perceived level of fraud. However, very little has been done with regards to assessments for mental disorder; this article seeks to investigate how such assessments are undertaken. Data originating from one clinical forensic psychologist's practice (N = 305) are examined to provide an insight into the assessment of mental disorder in the medico-legal arena in the United Kingdom, building upon previous research. Many important findings emerged from this analysis including a complicated relationship between the diagnosis of mental disorder and the gender of the claimant. In addition, this article provides detailed normative data using the Symptom Checklist 90 Revised, the Impact of Events Scale, and the Beck Depression Inventory.
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BFBNIB, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, PRFLJ, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Although public reaction to disaster has been the subject of much research, reactions to acts of terrorism have been studied less, sustaining a common assumption that fear is the generic response. ...The present paper tests this assumption through a survey of reactions to the Manchester Arena bombing and London Bridge attack of 2017, and the findings suggest that an important likely additional modal citizen reaction to such events is one of anger at the perpetrators, holding important implications for public policy and security practice in the wake of such acts.
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Malingering mental disorder for financial compensation can offer substantial rewards to those willing to do so. A recent review of UK medico-legal experts' practices for detecting claimants evidenced ...that they are not well equipped to detect those that do. This is not surprising, considering that very little is known regarding why individuals opt to malinger. A potential construct which may influence an individual's choice to malinger is their knowledge of the disorder, and when one considers the high levels of depression literacy within the UK, it is imperative that this hypothesis is investigated. A brief depression knowledge scale was devised and administered to undergraduate students (N = 155) alongside a series of questions exploring how likely participants were to malinger in both workplace stress and claiming for benefit vignettes. Depression knowledge did not affect the likelihood of engaging in any malingering strategy in either the workplace stress vignettes or the benefit claimant vignettes. Differences were found between the two vignettes providing evidence for the context-specific nature of malingering, and an individual's previous mental disorder was also influential.
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IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Abstract
Policing is undoubtedly a dangerous occupation whereby officers are routinely exposed to dangerous and potentially traumatic events, such as attending road traffic collisions, informing ...people of the death of a loved one, and ensuring public safety at football matches. Frontline policing is of course not the only place whereby constant exposure to dangerous and distressing incidents can increase the risk of police employees developing emotional and psychological complaints that have serious effects on their ‘wellbeing’, with previous research identifying specific policing areas such as homicide investigation as likely to have negative effects on those doing the investigating. Although to date, research has focused on the wellbeing effects of ‘routine policing’, criminal investigation, and specific events, as yet little is known about the effect on UK police employees wellbeing of ‘doing the job’ in terms of the number of days recorded as absent due to psychological illness, trauma, and stress. This study seeks to redress this gap by analysing sickness absence data recorded for 20 UK Police services for the past 10 years, obtained under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act. The data set represents some 57% of UK police personnel, and findings suggest that police employee absence due to psychological ill health, trauma, and stress had nearly doubled in the past 10 years to an absence rate of 8.82%. Furthermore, this study found that 39% of those who take a first leave of absence due to mental ill health go on to take further absences from work.
Around 20 to 50 million people are injured as a result of a road traffic accident (RTA) each year throughout the world. In the United Kingdom there have been considerable efforts made to review the ...assessment of whiplash claimants following RTAs due to the perceived level of fraud. However, very little has been done with regards to assessments for mental disorder; this article seeks to investigate how such assessments are undertaken. Data originating from one clinical forensic psychologist's practice (N = 305) are examined to provide an insight into the assessment of mental disorder in the medico-legal arena in the United Kingdom, building upon previous research. Many important findings emerged from this analysis including a complicated relationship between the diagnosis of mental disorder and the gender of the claimant. In addition, this article provides detailed normative data using the Symptom Checklist 90 Revised, the Impact of Events Scale, and the Beck Depression Inventory.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, PRFLJ, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Around 20 to 50 million people are injured as a result of a road traffic accident (RTA) each year throughout the world. In the United Kingdom there have been considerable efforts made to review the ...assessment of whiplash claimants following RTAs due to the perceived level of fraud. However, very little has been done with regards to assessments for mental disorder; this article seeks to investigate how such assessments are undertaken. Data originating from one clinical forensic psychologist's practice (N = 305) are examined to provide an insight into the assessment of mental disorder in the medico-legal arena in the United Kingdom, building upon previous research. Many important findings emerged from this analysis including a complicated relationship between the diagnosis of mental disorder and the gender of the claimant. In addition, this article provides detailed normative data using the Symptom Checklist 90 Revised, the Impact of Events Scale, and the Beck Depression Inventory.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, PRFLJ, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Purpose
Social media is an integral part of modern society and is used by billions of people worldwide. In a policing context, police services are starting to use social media platforms to interact ...with their communities. However, academic literature is lagging regarding the effectiveness of police use of social media. The purpose of this study is to gather public perceptions regarding the police’s use of social media particularly the use of Facebook.
Design/methodology/approach
The study administered a cross sectional survey recruiting participants who are policed by one of the larger police services in England and Wales. A total of 294 respondents completed the survey providing their views on their police service’s use of social media.
Findings
The results of the present study provide overwhelming support for the police’s use of social media by the public, with most respondents actively following their local police service’s social media accounts. The study additionally provides a number of important findings in relation to the preferences of the public with regards to their police service’s use of Facebook.
Practical implications
The findings presented here provide police services with an insight into how to implement an evidenced-based approach to their social media activity.
Originality/value
The present study takes an alternative approach to understanding the effectiveness of police social media use by simply asking residents, an approach not used in this area of policing research to date.
Research pertaining to the wellbeing of police focuses on the job at a macro level, neglecting that policing is an occupation made up of thousands of roles. The needs of staff in various roles ...differs according to the situations that they are exposed to. This paper provides a review of the literature pertaining to the impact of criminal investigation on employees’ wellbeing. Three discernible categories regarding the wellbeing of criminal investigators are revealed and the paper demonstrates that criminal investigation has a negative effect on the wellbeing of staff. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research, training and support.
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NUK, OILJ, SAZU, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
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