| Abstract [eng] |
The health and well-being of law enforcement officers is important at both the individual and community levels to maintain a workforce and meet the mission of public security. It is noticeable that there is still a lack of research which investigates health-related risk-taking behavior among law enforcement officers. Such behavior is theoretically associated with two factors: adverse childhood experiences and sensation-seeking. Adverse childhood experiences can have negative, long-term effects on health and emotional well-being. It is also thought that the trait of sensation-seeking may be a motive for people to engage in risky activities. The aim of this study was to examine the links between police officers‘ and firefighters‘ health-related risky behavior, sensation-seeking and adverse childhood experiences. A total of 203 participants were investigated, 140 of them were officers of the Fire and Rescue Department and 63 were officers of the Police Department. The majority of the subjects were men (66.5 %), the average age of the participants was 41.01 years (SD = 10.28), the average years of work experience was 17.36 years (SD = 9.75). The emotional and physical violence experienced by officers in childhood varied according to the frequency of alcohol use: the more frequent was the violence in childhood, the more frequent was alcohol use in adulthood. Officials who reported alcohol consumption in the last 30 days, had higher scores on Sensations Seeking scale than the ones‘ who did not. The same results were obtained with drug usage: officers who had ever tried drugs had higher rates of sensation-seeking than those who had never used it. In addition, there was a difference in sensation-seeking rates between officers‘ who had smoked e-cigarettes and those who had never smoked: officers who had ever tried e-cigarettes had a higher level of sensation-seeking than those who had never tried it. Also, men had significantly higher scores on the Sensation Seeking Scale than women. Finally, younger participants were more likely to smoke e-cigarettes than older. Thus, research on the links between officials' risky behaviors, adverse childhood experiences and personality traits is a relevant area that needs to be developed in the future to make the data more representative in this specific group. |
