Saskatchewan Federation of Police Officers 31 Police officers often speak about their careers as being amongst the most challenging and the most rewarding vocations available today. Our police officers certainly provide a critical service in keeping all of us as safe as possible - they quite literally place themselves in harm’s way in the hopes of protecting everyone else - running towards danger. Doing so necessarily and presumptively requires that our police officers encounter incidents that involve direct or indirect “exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence” (APA, 2013) - incidents colloquially referred to as traumas. The general population may experience one or two such events during their lives and there is an acceptance that being exposed to a single such event can produce a host of symptoms that are distressing and interfere with daily activities (e.g., work, play); however, that same acceptance has been slow-coming for our public safety personnel, including our police officers. The slow acceptance has likely resulted from a combination of social factors that only began to change after World War I. Prior to World War I psychological symptoms were pejoratively considered the result of a consequence of weak constitution or a lack of masculinity. Different diagnoses might have been provided for symptoms of anxiety or depression that seemed to
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