(PS9-C67) Confidence in Suicidal Crisis Training Moderates the Relation Between Police Officer’s Stigma of Suicide and Perceived Dangerousness of Those with Mental Illness

Police officers are potentially exposed to crisis encounters with individuals with severe mental illness daily (Soomro & Yanos, 2018). Concurrently, police officers often have negative beliefs towards mental illness in general, which can lead to them developing stigma of mental illness (Miller, 2005). Stressful experiences that police officers encounter, in conjunction with their stigma towards mental illness and suicide, likely contribute to police officers’ perceived dangerousness of those experiencing mental illness crises (Chopko et al., 2014). Thus, there is a need to identify contributors to police officers’ beliefs towards mental illness. This would aid in developing training protocols for officers responding to mental health crises. The current study investigated the relation between police officer’s stigma of suicide and perceived dangerousness of those with mental illness (PDMI), as moderated by perceived confidence in suicide crisis training. We hypothesized that there would be a significant moderating effect, where higher increased confidence in suicide crisis training would produce a weaker relation between stigma of suicide and perceived dangerousness of those with mental illness.  

Participants (N = 122; 91.0% men, 9.0% women) were police officers Southwest Texas assessed prior to completing a mandated crisis intervention training course. The majority of officers reported identifying as White (89.3%), 27.9% identified as Hispanic, 1.6% as Black, 1.6% as Asian, 0.8% as Native American, and 3.3% as other. Participants completed self-report measures cross-sectionally, including demographics questions assessing the perceived confidence in participant’s current suicidal crisis training (i.e., “Do you feel that you have received sufficient training in interacting with people in a suicidal crisis (i.e., you feel confident and comfortable responding to any call where a person(s) may be in a suicidal crisis)?”), the Beliefs Towards Mental Illness - Dangerousness Subscale (BTMI; Hirai & Clum, 2000), assessing perceived dangerousness of individuals with mental illness, and the Stigma of Suicide Scale (SOSS; Batterham, Calear, & Christensen, 2012), a 16-item measure assessing stigma towards suicide.

Our hypotheses were supported, but not in the expected direction. The interaction between SOSS and confidence in suicidal crisis training was significant [B = .040, p = .011]. Simple slope analyses indicated that the association between SOSS and PDMI was strongest when confidence was high (B = .244, p < .001), and was not significant when confidence was low (B = .002, p</em> = .981). Thus, police officer’s confidence in suicidal crisis training strengthens’ the associations between SOSS and perceived dangerousness of those with mental illness. These results, while surprising, may provide important information for the need for stigma intervention in crisis trainings for first responders. Further analyses should be conducted with post crisis intervention training, to assess for change in this relation.