Occupational stress, anxiety and coping strategies in police officers.

BACKGROUND: Studies on occupational stress have shown that police officers are exposed to stressful events more often than other workers and this can result in impaired psychosocial well-being and physical health. AIMS: To measure the level of stress experienced, the consequences in terms of anxiety and the coping strategies adopted in a sample of police officers working in a large city in northern Italy. METHODS: We used the Police Stress Questionnaire and the Distress Thermometer to measure occupational stress, the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory to measure anxiety and the Brief COPE questionnaire to measure coping strategies. RESULTS: Six hundred seventeen police officers completed the questionnaire, a response rate of 34%. Differences between genders, sectors and roles emerged, but overall the study population generally demonstrated good use of positive coping strategies. Women in all operational service roles were more vulnerable to both organizational and operational stressors than men (P < 0.001), while in the interior department, men were more vulnerable to organizational stressors (P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that for Italian police officers, training courses and support in dealing with occupational stress should take into account gender, role and type of work. Tailored training courses and support programmes could be useful and effective tools for preventing stress before it becomes chronic.

Lack of association between vigabatrin and impaired cognition.

Of 14 patients with a history of partial epilepsy who received vigabatrin 2 g daily for 6 months, eight were newly diagnosed and received vigabatrin as monotherapy, while the remaining six received vigabatrin in addition to pre-existing treatment with phenobarbitone. Neurophysiological and neuropsychological evaluations, done before and after the therapeutic period, included the Luria-Nebraska neuropsychological battery (LNNB), electroencephalograms (EEGs) and evoked potentials. The results for each item of the test battery at baseline were compared with those after 6 months' treatment. There were no statistically significant differences on the functional scales of the LNNB, the EEG or the evoked potentials. There was a significant improvement (P = 0.01) in the LNNB topographic scales for the right frontal lobe and the motor-sensory area following treatment. These results indicate that vigabatrin has no detrimental effects on cognitive function and may improve function.

[Laughter and smiling. The gesture between social philosophy and psychobiology]. / Riso e sorriso. Il gesto fra filosofia sociale e psicobiologia.

The human individual experiences his gestuality unaware, making it even more revelatory of his current state of mind. Certain actions represent innate behaviour, while others are discovered or assimilated during learning. The actions that signify the sending of any kind of message to another person, become "gestures". Laughter is an example of expressive behaviour and, as such, plays an important part in social interaction, insofar as it supplies signals that influence the response of other individuals. After a review of the philosophical and sociological interpretations inherent in laughing and smiling, the correlations between weeping, smiling and laughing are examined specifically from as ethological standpoint. The neurophysiological aspects whereby the crying, smiling and laughing mechanisms depend on a multifactorial control system, that implies the activation of limbic and frontal circuits, a motor cortex response and an activation of the autonomic response of the vegetative nervous system, correlated to the cortico-hypothalamic ways, are then examined. The pathological observations carried out in Man are identified with the study of psychomotor epilepsy in the context of "gelastic crises", cataleptic-gelolegic crises "and the pseudo-bulbar syndrome" with crying and spastic laughing. Finally, the possible therapeutic implications correlated with the laughing mechanism are discussed. In fact, the facial contractions, associated with the emotional experience connected with them, would appear to function as a standard brain signal. Interesting are the findings of changes in neuromediator and endorphin modifications implied in the neurophysiological smiling and laughing mechanism. A further basic element is the involvement of the autonomous system which can be correlated with the concept of the trophotropic response according to Hesse, with an increase in parasympathetic tone and reduction in sympathetic tone.