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Police1’s “What Cops Want in 2024” survey focused on officer wellness and behavioral health. This year’s findings reveal the profound impact of mental wellness struggles among law enforcement officers, with many reporting issues such as sleep disturbances, depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress. The survey brings attention to the widespread effects of work-related stress, including alarming rates of suicidal thoughts and burnout. The results emphasize the pressing need for comprehensive wellness initiatives within police departments to help officers manage the emotional and psychological toll of their demanding roles.
In this episode of Policing Matters, host Jim Dudley sits down with Dr. David Black, founder of Cordico and Lexipol’s president of Wellness Solutions and a leading expert in law enforcement wellness and mental health, to discuss the findings from the “What Cops Want” survey. With nearly 3,000 officers responding, the survey sheds light on the pressing wellness issues impacting law enforcement personnel across the country. Dr. Black breaks down the pervasive challenges — such as sleep disturbances, trauma and suicidal thoughts — and provides actionable strategies for officers, agencies and communities to better support police wellness.
About our sponsor
Utility, Inc. is a technology innovator, providing a range of digital solutions for law enforcement and public safety entities. From state-of-the-art body cameras and in-car video devices to robust ALPR systems and interview room setups, our solutions enhance operational accuracy and transparency. Our cloud-based platforms offer robust evidence management, district attorney case preparation, and unified video feed views for improved situational awareness. A fully customizable suite, backed by round-the-clock Atlanta-based tech support, ensures adherence to agency policies and global service reach. To learn more about Utility’s technology solutions, please visit utility.com.
About our guest
David Black, Ph.D. is the founder of Cordico, the president of Lexipol Wellness Solutions and the chief psychologist for the California Police Chiefs Association. He also serves on the Board of Directors for Lexipol, which serves more than 2 million public safety professionals in 10,000 agencies and municipalities across the United States. Over the years, he has worked collaboratively with the IACP, the FBINAA, the National Sheriffs’ Association, the National Policing Institute and other associations to help strengthen wellness nationally for those who serve and protect. Inspired by the heroic sacrifices of first responders on September 11, 2001, Dr. Black has been serving law enforcement for more than 20 years. Click here for more information on Cordico.
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Episode transcript
Jim Dudley: I’m your host, Jim Dudley. Hey, I hope you’re listening to us on the podcast of your choice, or maybe you’re watching us on YouTube where you actually get to see my guest. And we have a great guest for you today! There were several items of interest in the latest Police1 survey, “2024 What Cops Want.” There were some familiar themes and tones to be sure—salary, benefits, public opinion, training, and some others—but there seemed to be an emphasis this year on the themes of officer wellness and behavioral health.
Well, it was really great to hear from Dr. David Black. He’s the perfect expert to help us walk through and understand some of these issues and what the survey means—what we can do better to support our cops. Dr. David Black is the founder of Cordico and Lexipol’s President of Wellness Solutions. I think this is your third appearance back on the podcast. Welcome back, Dr. Black.
Dr. David Black: Thanks so much, Jim. Always an honor to be here. Thanks so much to everyone out there watching and listening. And I just want to, before we get into anything else, say thank you for your service and your sacrifices, Jim, and everyone out there watching and listening. The work you do is important. It’s the bedrock foundation of a safe, secure, civil, and just society. We appreciate you, we honor you, and we’re very grateful for you tuning in today. Thank you.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, thank you. I appreciate those kind words. And I want to jump right into some of the feedback on the survey, and I’ve highlighted them in our show notes. Our listeners or watchers can go to our show notes and bring up the actual survey, but 71% reported that they struggled with sleep disturbances, 50% experienced heightened anger, 50% indicated relationship or family issues, 39% said they were affected by depression, 36% had anxiety or panic attacks, and 35% reported post-traumatic stress (PTSD) or PTSI. And an alarming 11% harbored suicidal thoughts specifically due to the work process.
I mean, you heard the introduction—what popped off the top of the list to you? What caught your attention?
Dr. David Black: A lot of things pop off the list there, and I would say it’s the overall pervasiveness and severity of the mental health impact of the work. One thing I want to point out is this: This was a national survey, so this is law enforcement nationwide. There were nearly 3,000 officers who responded—it was 2,833 law enforcement personnel from across the United States. I believe it was 98% sworn, so this is a real nice nationwide sample.
And when you think about the sort of people who go into law enforcement work, this is a self-selected group of tough, resilient, courageous people. These aren’t people that you think of as being vulnerable to mental health issues—quite the opposite. I often like to draw the distinction between the average person on the street and the person who wears the badge and carries the gun, puts on the body armor every day, and ask yourself the question: If the average person on the street was thinking about a career path, are they going to say, “Yeah, put that body armor on me, and I’ll carry a sidearm, and you can dispatch me all day long to the highest-risk, highest-stress, most dangerous situations”? No, this is a very, very select group of people. You’re talking about courageous, tough, resilient people.
So, when you look at this data, and you see—by the way, those stats you cited—those are mind-blowing stats to me as a police psychologist. I’ve been working with law enforcement for 22 plus years or so, and those are mind-blowing statistics.
First of all, the questions about those were due specifically to work stress. Have you experienced these things? So, this isn’t just like, “Have you experienced depression?”—have you experienced depression due to work stress? And so, it’s the pervasiveness of it. Like you said, it’s more than seven out of 10 dealing with sleep disturbance.
More on that—I’ll give you an example of just how extraordinary these responses are, and I think the reason it’s important to emphasize this, call this out, and shine a light on it is to normalize it and the reality check, because we all like to deal with reality. I think police are better than anyone at dealing with harsh realities, so let’s deal with our own harsh reality here.
The lifetime prevalence for depression amongst U.S. adults is around 18.4%, yet here we have 39% of our law enforcement nationwide saying, “I’ve had depression specifically due to work-related stress,” so more than double the lifetime prevalence of depression in the general population. So, that’s striking, and it’s similar with post-traumatic stress—it’s just a much, much higher prevalence rate there.
I put a couple of questions in the survey around suicidal thinking. So, we did ask one question, and first of all, let’s acknowledge it’s very, very hard for officers to answer this question. So, I want to specifically call out and honor the officers who answered this and answered this with a level of candor and transparency, because that’s very difficult to do.
Eleven percent say, “I’ve had suicidal thoughts specifically due to work stress.” I wanted to put another question in there, though, and the way we worded this was to say, “Within the past year”—so not lifetime, but just within the past year—“have you had thoughts of suicide or devaluing your life, or thinking others would be better off without you, or feeling indifferent to the value of your life?” Because a lot of officers, they don’t necessarily think, “I want to go out and die by suicide,” but they might be thinking, “I just don’t value my life anymore.” And I’ve heard a lot of stories about officers saying, “I’m taking risks on the job I wouldn’t take if I valued my life.” So, I wanted that question there—that was 16%. So, about one out of six of our law enforcement officers nationwide are saying, “Within the past year, I’ve had those types of thoughts and experiences.”
For anyone in law enforcement, for anyone who loves someone in law enforcement, for anyone who cares about the policing profession, the well-being of those out there serving and protecting and putting their lives on the line, or just anyone in the community who honors and respects law enforcement, anyone in government or politics who relies on these very special people on standby to, again, handle our most stressful, difficult, dangerous situations—that should shine a light in everyone’s face and say, “Let’s really take this seriously. This is a very, very big issue.”
So, that’s a big part of the message. And the other thing about law enforcement that I think a lot of people don’t appreciate is that law enforcement are psychologically screened before they enter the profession, right? 99% of people never get psychologically screened before they enter their job, right? So, these are people who have been given a clean bill of health upon entering the profession, right? Psychologically, medically, they’ve been background investigated. So, these are portraits of mental and physical health, very characteristically entering the profession.
But what’s different then is we ask these people again and again and again to respond to extremely difficult, extremely stressful, often traumatic incidents. And it’s important to understand that over time, we all have our limitations, right? We all have our limitations of what we can endure, and we can’t ignore this. This is a very big deal, and again, this goes well beyond anything that could be considered normal. There’s a severity to this, there’s a pervasiveness to this, and it’s important that we’re all very aware and taking this very seriously.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, and we also know that there’s that stigma attached if we’re talking about suicidal thoughts, and so I’m sure you’d probably guess, as I do, that that 11% is probably a little bit artificially low because a lot of sworn cops are not going to make that admission.
Dr. David Black: Yeah, there’s a very common phenomenon when people are having suicidal thoughts referred to as “masking.” And masking is simply, “I’m not showcasing these thoughts or feelings to other people. I’m putting on a mask, and I’m keeping these thoughts and feelings to myself.” And that’s common. Now, when you think about law enforcement, what are law enforcement taught to do with their emotions in the academy, right? Put on a mask, command presence, right? You don’t show people if you’re fatigued, you don’t show people if you’re having a bad day. That can jeopardize your safety—that’s basic officer safety, right? But it makes it really difficult when we’ve taught officers almost from day one how to mask, and now later, the career’s impacted them in such a way that we need them to reach out and share these things through the appropriate, helpful channels. And that, by the way, can also make it more difficult for family members. It can make it more difficult for peer supporters to read what’s going on.
Jim Dudley: Absolutely. Yeah, no, I mean, over my career, I’ve had experience with officers who have taken their own lives, and like you say, in most cases, you would never know that there was anything wrong—no indicators that would tell you that the person’s really struggling. So, I think that’s why it’s so important for people to self-report. And, you know, that’s the quandary, right? We have people who won’t support and they won’t show outwardly, so what do we do? And that’s my next question: What can we do short-term to address some of these issues?
Dr. David Black: Yeah, fortunately, I will tell you, this is something I’ve been obsessing over for most of my professional life now, is what to do exactly with this quandary, among many other challenges in the world of law enforcement wellness. The first step is awareness. The first step is, do not sweep stuff under the rug. It’s all too easy to do that. It’s all too easy to say, “You know what? We’re police, we’ve got to stay tough, we’ve got to stay strong. The calls don’t stop coming in. We just got to get out there and do the job.” It’s like, let’s not hide from these realities, right?
And I come back to the fact that law enforcement are the people that confront the harsh realities of life day after day. So, let’s not treat this one any different. Let’s shine a light on it. Let’s never stop talking about it. Let’s make it a big deal. Let’s have everybody thinking about this. I want chiefs thinking about this. I want mayors thinking about this. I want risk pools thinking about this. I want human resources departments thinking about this. I want officers from the day they start considering this career thinking about it. I want their families thinking about it. Everyone needs to be aware of the realities, and then everyone needs to have a solution-oriented mindset.
It’s exactly what we look for in good officers. You want everybody to have a disposition of, “How can I help?” Let’s look at the realities and then say, “How can I help?”
So, what I want is, if you’re thinking about how you can help yourself in your wellness, absolutely be thinking about that in light of these statistics. When you’re thinking about fellow officers in the department, your brothers and sisters on the force, be thinking about, “How can I help them?” Be thinking about this over the course of your career and how it changes people. How is it changing you? How is it changing others that you serve with? Again, if you’re a loved one of someone in law enforcement, be thinking about this. Be on the lookout.
So that’s the first thing. And secondly, provide tools and resources. It’s completely unfair and unrealistic to just assume officers can manage this all on their own. It’s the same way, like we wouldn’t send you out there without body armor, right? Let’s not send you out there without the right tools and resources.
You know, the National FOP, they’ve done so much great work and so much great research on this. And by the way, when we talk about the stigma research, the FOP absolutely led the way on that. The National FOP were the ones that did that national research and identified the stigma, as far as I can tell, well before anyone else did that.
But one interesting finding that I recall the National FOP presenting at a conference was agencies that provide more wellness resources—you see better outcomes, right? It’s a good thing to provide more and more resources. I had a police chief come to me, probably back in 2017, John Carli from the Vacaville Police Department—he’s now the mayor of Vacaville. Very intelligent, very wonderful police chief. And he was the one who said, “Hey, why don’t you take all this stuff you do and put it in an app?” And so, that wound up becoming the Cordico wellness app. I think we’ve got—well, it’s well over 1,000 agencies nationwide using Cordico; it might be around 1,200 or so.
We polled those agencies recently, and we got a good sample response—72% of agencies using Cordico report that it’s helped with suicide prevention or prevented an actual suicide at their agency within the past year alone. So, this is a life-saving tool. So, at the agency level, getting high-quality wellness tools and support resources in the hands of law enforcement is key. And we can talk about some of those different tools and resources that are available. So, that’s what can be done at the agency level, and there are lots of ways people can support that. Like, if you’re the chief, you can lead the charge. If you’re peer support, you can influence. If you’re new to the profession, you can be thinking about this and how you help do this. And again, if you’re somehow tangentially related to law enforcement, there are lots of ways that hopefully you can influence and help and be part of the solution.
I also want to say to everyone: A key is just making a choice to prioritize your own wellness, and understanding that it’s not selfish to do that. I think oftentimes, this profession draws people who are very focused on helping other people—that’s the fundamental nature of the job. And to appreciate that it is not selfish at all, but it’s basic officer safety to take care of your own wellness. It’s basic officer safety.
And people often use the oxygen mask analogy. If something’s going wrong on the plane, you start to lose pressure, the masks come down. What’s the hero going to do? The hero wants to make sure everybody else’s mask is on first. Great intention, except you’re going to pass out, and then you’re not going to be of any use to anyone. Put on your own mask first. Adopt this principle deep in your heart: I have to take care of myself. So, have a personal wellness plan. That can change, evolve, and adapt over time, but be thinking about your sleep, your nutrition, your exercise, your own mental health. Be in touch with that, be gauging that, be thinking about that, and prioritize your own mental health and wellness over time.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, well, you just gave a synopsis of our six-part series that we did. We did five-minute segments on things that you just mentioned—you and Mandy Nice talked about how important it was to have good nutrition and fitness and relationships outside of the job.
But as we’ve seen in this survey, 71% reported problems with sleep, and sleep is really that first domino, isn’t it, in poor performance? And we put these young cops in this situation all the time because they are lowest seniority, probably have kids—newborns, small kids at home—working a midnight shift, coming home at 6 or 7 in the morning. The kids are wide awake; maybe Mom’s going to work, and now who knows when you’re going to get a nap. But it affects your judgment, your focus, your driving, your ability to use critical thinking—all those things. And I hear you repeat the process of sleep being so important. Now, even though suicide is at 11%, which is critical, we got 71% of people having problems sleeping. That’s critical too, isn’t it?
Dr. David Black: It is. Sleep is absolutely vital. You simply can’t function on the most basic level without sufficient sleep, right? And like, I know Jim, for example, you do a lot of teaching and education, and you probably look out there, and you can just tell the students who haven’t got enough sleep—it’s just obvious, right? So, you think about, like, geez, you’re out there responding to life-and-death situations, you’re responding to situations where your life could be in jeopardy any second, and you’re sleep-deprived—that’s a nightmare scenario. And here we have 71% reporting sleep issues.
So, let’s just talk about some effects of sleep deprivation. You’re going to have slower reaction time, you’re going to have poor coordination, you’re going to have more fatigue, less energy, you’re going to be more forgetful, your immune system is going to be weakened, higher level of stress, you’re going to be more vulnerable to developing post-traumatic stress, more vulnerable to suicidal thinking, more vulnerable to depression. I mean, the list just goes on and on—increased risk for all sorts of negative health outcomes, chronic health conditions, negative mood changes. I mean, the list just goes on and on—slower reaction time, I mean, it’s all the things you never ever want to experience for one second as an officer out there on the street.
So again, number one, shine a light on it. Let’s talk about it, let’s be realistic about how pervasive this is, and then be talking about what we can do about it.
So, well, first off, if you have the Cordico app—and so many agencies do—go in there and take the Cordico sleep test. Click on the self-assessments, click the Cordico sleep test, take that. It’ll give you feedback. That test looks at three factors: it looks at sleep apnea, it looks at insomnia, and it looks at sleep hygiene. And it tells you, here are your results and here’s what you should do about it.
Now, if you don’t have access to that, let me give you some tips. First of all, make sleep a top priority. It’s essential for your mental health, your physical health, your longevity, and your safety day-to-day on the job. And on top of that, your job necessarily tends to make it quite difficult, obviously, if you’re working nights, for example, and your circadian rhythms have literally been flipped upside down. And then I know so many of those officers, they get in a situation where they’re working so many days on and then trying to flip back to normal circadian rhythm cycle to be with family during the day off, and then flipping it back. Or, you’re just one of these, like, vast majority of law enforcement who’s facing overtime and very, very long work hours, and the survey results certainly show that.
You really, more than anyone else, given those factors pushing against you having good sleep, combined with the life-or-death quality of your work, you’ve got to make sleep a higher priority than just about anyone else in our society.
So, appreciate this is how your brain and your body recover. One way to think about this is, if you’re a weightlifter, imagine what it would be like if you hit the weights hard, and basically, you’re taxing the system, and then you never get any rest, don’t eat any protein. What’s that going to do over time? It’s just going to destroy you. But, on the other hand, if you hit the weights, you expose the mind and body to stress, and then you sleep and you get protein and proper nutrition, what happens? You get stronger over time. So, sleep is sort of the inflection point that determines if you’re going to get stronger over time in response to all these stressors, or is it really going to be harmful to you?
So, just some tips. One is: go for absolute blackout in your sleep environment. Your body is evolved to want full blackout conditions when you sleep. Some people do this with blackout curtains; other people buy a sleep mask. I’m a big advocate of sleep masks—I think they’re great. You can go on Amazon, you can buy a sleep mask for 10 bucks. And the beauty of a sleep mask is it makes things pitch black. And the reason that’s important is that it cues the body that it’s time to sleep. It triggers the pineal gland to produce melatonin—that’s your sleep hormone. You really need that to get high-quality sleep. If you’re sleeping in any sort of partial lighting conditions, that’s not helpful to you. You’re not going to get proper melatonin production.
Another important variable is temperature. And sleep lab research tends to say 68 degrees is about the warmest you want it to be in your sleep environment. I’ve seen other sleep research that says more around 66 degrees. I’d be happy if everyone could just get to 68 degrees or below, particularly if you’re living in the South, if you’re living in some of these warmer climates. You really got to go out of your way to get your sleep environment down in temperature, but that’s really, really key to having a healthy, restful sleep.
A couple of other things to think about: alcohol impairs your sleep. Alcohol, for some people, makes it easier for them to fall asleep, but then what not everybody realizes is alcohol tends to interrupt your deep sleep, your real restorative sleep. So just keep that in mind. I would advocate for zero alcohol if you have any sleep issues.
Also, caffeine. The thing about caffeine is it makes it more difficult to fall asleep. Even if you’re one—I was talking with a friend yesterday, he’s like, “I drank an espresso and took a nap.” Well, that’s great—some people are able to do that. But even so, what the sleep research is really clear about showing is that your sleep quality is not as good as it would have been if you didn’t have caffeine. I think a lot of people are under this illusion that, “Oh, I’m able to sleep just fine.” Keep in mind, caffeine has a very long half-life—it stays active in your body 12 hours after you’ve drank caffeine, in a degraded way, but it’s still interfering with sleep. So, if you’re out on patrol and you’re drinking energy drinks and all this, that is going to result in you having lesser quality of restful, restorative sleep. So, I recommend staying away from those things.
The last thing I’ll say is, I have heard a lot of people tell me that they appreciate Remfresh. I have no relationship with Remfresh or anything, but I did hear from a leading sleep researcher that she recommends it. It’s melatonin, and the problem is with a lot of melatonin, like the stuff you’d buy at the grocery store, the research I’ve seen is that, first of all, you’re walloping yourself with, say, five or 10 milligrams of melatonin all at once—it’s very unnatural. Your brain doesn’t dump that level of melatonin into your body all at once and then just nothing more after that. But there’s research that shows there’s real quality control issues with this. It’ll be advertised as this, but then you test it in the lab, and no, it’s not—it’s more or less than that. But the reason the sleep researcher told me she liked Remfresh is it bills itself as pharmaceutical-grade melatonin, and then it slow releases over the course of seven hours. And so I tried it myself, and I’m like, “This is actually very helpful.” So, if you’re trying—and you never want to get dependent on anything like that—but I have found it can be useful. I’ve heard a lot of other people say it can be useful when you’re trying to force yourself into a new sleep schedule. Particularly that first night, if you’re on a new schedule, it can really help you get that structured.
And the last thing I’ll say is just, you’re not in this alone, so enlist other people to support you in prioritizing your sleep. If that’s your spouse, if that’s your kids, if it’s whoever—just letting them know, “Hey, I’m out there doing a difficult job, I’ve got to prioritize my sleep, I need your support.” And if you ask for people’s help, they’re often there for you.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, well, I’m taking note—66 to 68 degrees, I love that because I love a cold room. And Remfresh, I am definitely checking that out.
Hey, I want to talk some more about what you just alluded to, and that was the importance of self-assessments and how we can do that. But first, I want to take a moment and thank our sponsor.
And we’re back, and I’m speaking with Dr. David Black, founder of Cordico and the mental health and wellness president of Lexipol Wellness Solutions. Wow, that’s a mouthful, Dr. Black!
We’ve talked, and we’ve done that mini-series on all the different things. Going back to the survey, many of the symptoms described—anger, conflict, relationships—they all seem to show a relationship with trauma. Is that right? If so, what do we need to do to address that? How can we address trauma? I mean, that’s part of the job, isn’t it?
Dr. David Black: It’s a big part of the job, and yes, you’re absolutely right. Anger, conflict, relationship issues—those tend to all have ties to trauma. So, first of all, let’s talk about what trauma is. Trauma is a Greek word for “wound,” and so we’re talking about any sort of events that have any sort of lasting negative impact on us—persistent wounds, if you will.
So, we know that police encounter a large number of these types of events—vastly more than most people ever experience in their lifetime. There’s research, for example, that shows the average law enforcement officer experiences around 188 critical incidents over the course of their lifetime—critical incidents typically being events that we would describe as, you would expect to overwhelm the ability of the average person to cope.
So, examples of traumatic events, critical incidents, are being shot at, being in a physical altercation, seeing your partner assaulted, responding to the death of a child call, being the first responder at a mass casualty event. It’s an extraordinarily long list of things—it’s just things that stick with you over time in a negative way and have some kind of impact.
Now, there are these much more obvious ones, like, obviously if your partner’s assaulted in front of you, or if you respond to a mass casualty event—those are very obviously traumatic events. But frequently, it’s much more analogous to this idea of death by a thousand cuts or this stack of stress over time. And so, that’s this idea that it doesn’t matter how tough you are, it doesn’t matter how resilient you are—at the end of the day, we’re human, we’re all human beings here, and we all have our limits.
And so, you think about this in a couple of ways. One is, your limit might be you can handle 50 of these traumatic events, and the average person could handle maybe one, if they’re lucky. But you’re human, so at some point, it is going to get through to you.
The second thing is that it can be very complex and nuanced and individualized in terms of what does get through to you, and when it gets through to you. An example could be, like, you respond to a call, and this person reminds you of your kid back home in ways that you’re not even aware of, and so suddenly, this one gets through to you. Or this is in a neighborhood where you grew up, or—I mean, it’s very complex emotionally, how this does get through. And so you got to be aware that, for you, things might get through at times where other things that seem worse, objectively, didn’t—those didn’t bother you, but suddenly, this one does. And it can be for reasons that are very difficult to disentangle.
So it’s important to appreciate that. It’s also important to understand—I love the analogy of the cup filling up. Some people have a very big cup, some people have a small cup, but this cup fills up with stress over time, and at some point, it’s hard to manage the stress reliably over time. And that’s where the cup’s starting to spill over. When that happens, stress and trauma tend to impact our lives in lots of insidious ways—such as through irritability, anger, conflicts, relationship stress, sleep disturbance, and the like.
And so, those are important red lights—those are signs, those are signals, those are indicators, those are flags that I need to dial into what’s going on for me here, and I need to put together a plan to take care of this. I need to maybe reach out and get help.
But the things that this impacts are often the things that we rely on to manage stress in the first place. Sleep’s a real easy example. Sleep is core to our ability to manage stress. And then, when the stress and the trauma get to the point that your sleep is now disturbed or impacted, this is where we have the potential for a downward spiral, because the very mechanism that we rely on to keep the cup from overflowing is now impacted by the stress.
Or relationships are another example. For a lot of us, these positive relationships in our life—these are like our bedrocks, these are our foundations. So, when those start to become compromised or impacted, that’s where we have a real serious problem.
So, all of this points back to the importance of education and awareness, providing strong support resources for those who serve and protect, because they pay a price for their service. And that’s a debt that our society should take very seriously. Because the stress and trauma that we’re talking about for law enforcement—this is the result of serving and protecting our communities, of going out there and being heroic and doing the right thing. And again, I come back to that being the bedrock foundation of a stable, safe, and secure society. And so, when law enforcement are suffering from unresolved stress and trauma, it’s really all of our responsibility to take that very seriously.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, I mean, as you’re saying that, it makes me think of all the things that we have happening at home, and then we add all the trauma that we’re seeing and this feedback from other people. But now we have that administrative or organizational stress on top of that, and then the media and social media. And we’re heading into this election in a couple of months, and, you know, it may seem really frustrating when you’re trying to do a job, trying to do what’s best for people, and you’re hearing all this negative stuff about cops and laws and the legislature.
How can we do a self-assessment to understand? I mean, we could just let anger build, build, build, until we hit that steam rising off the top of our head, or can we do an assessment to say, “Hey, wait, you’re starting to head into a stage where you’re going to need to talk to some people, whether they’re peer support officers or clinicians”? At what point can we understand where we really need to get some help?
Dr. David Black: So, I’m a big advocate of self-assessment. A way to think about this—just an analogy that I’ve always used—is, imagine you’re lowering your hand onto a hot burner on a stove, right? Do I want to wait until my hand’s been cooking on there for five minutes before I get the feedback? No. Actually, the sooner you give me the feedback, the better, so I can make an informed decision about what I want to do. That’s what self-assessment is all about.
Your body naturally does this with heat, for example—gives you that immediate feedback. Visually, you get feedback. Auditorily, you get feedback. This is all about basic officer wellness behavior, right, and scanning the environment. It’s being aware. In this case, we’re talking about being self-aware. And so, what you want is, you want to be getting this information as early as possible so that you can make informed judgments before unnecessary damage is done. Again, before my hand’s been cooking for five minutes on this burner.
And what we see with law enforcement is, a lot of times, it’s like, God, you’ve been dealing with PTSD for 10 years—you’ve just been suffering for 10 years. And my heart just goes out—your heart just breaks at this. It’s like, thank God we finally got a chance to help you. And what I want to do is, I want to hit the rewind, and I want to get in front of all the officers possible and say, “You don’t have to deal with this for one extra day.” There’s lots of help and resources available for you.
But that’s where self-assessments are key—this is about empowering law enforcement with information. You know, before we launched the Cordico app, my sense was, like, how does a law enforcement officer figure out if they’ve got depression, or post-traumatic stress, or a drinking problem, or an anger issue, or what’s going on with my sleep? It’s like, literally, they would have had to call the EAP line, get an appointment with a clinician, go sit down. I mean, come on. It’s like a month later, I’m sitting there, and hopefully this clinician gives me an assessment and shares the feedback with me.
Well, the way we built in the Cordico app, there’s a big list of self-assessments. Just push “Depression,” push “Post-Traumatic Stress,” push “Sleep”—we’ve got a suicide risk one in there. And you just answer these simple questions anonymously, and then it gives you the feedback. And so, I’m a big—now, if you have the Cordico app, great. I really encourage you, go in there routinely, and I’m a big advocate of this idea—like, if you’re empowered to go out and use deadly force, you certainly should be empowered to take your own self-assessments and get feedback and decide what you want to do with that.
So, I encourage you, if you get that feedback, now reach out to peer support. Reach out to a culturally competent clinician. Take that information and say, “What changes am I going to make? What am I going to do to mitigate this so I don’t have to be a victim and see this get worse and worse?”
The one that I’m really excited about—we put about five years of research and development into the newest self-assessment, it’s called “The CREST”—the Cordico Resilience Evaluation and Strengthening Test. And we’ve literally looked at thousands of research studies over time, boiled it down to the core elements of resilience and the fewest number of questions we needed to ask. So, it’s a quick, easy assessment you take, and then it’s like, based on your results, here’s how you get the maximum bang for your buck in strengthening your resilience. Here are the areas you’re great in, here are the areas you could improve in, here’s what you can do.
So, now again, if you don’t have access to Cordico, there are other ways you can do this. You can go in and talk with a peer supporter, you can talk with a clinician, you can talk with your spouse, you can gauge your own experience over time. The important thing is, be thinking about this, be collecting the feedback, and taking a proactive wellness approach to addressing these issues, as opposed to letting them fester and worsen over time.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, that’s really helpful. And I know my agency, my old agency, has it—I think I still have access to it. I want to check it out.
Let’s see, I wanted to ask one more question, but I mean, you’ve spent a lot of time with us so far today.
Unplugging people—I mean, my colleague here, where I teach at my university, she investigated Swedish prisons, where they send Swedish prisoners for, I think, two weeks or a month to a vacation. And I’m thinking, we don’t even do that with our sworn cops! And at some point, are you hearing of best practices where there are agencies that are unplugging their people, where they’ve said, “Hey, okay, this person is being affected. We need to unplug them for a little bit and get some work into them before we put them back on the streets”?
Dr. David Black: Yeah, that definitely comes up. You know, how tragic is that when we’ve got these examples of prisoners? There you go—you’ve got the examples of prisoners getting these paid vacations, but not our frontline heroes. That’s where things have really been turned upside down.
But, you know, I think honestly, most law enforcement—and by the way, there are great agencies out there that do things like sabbaticals and paid leave, and that’s all wonderful. I think most officers feel like they don’t want that tied into mental health—that’s something they don’t want. There are cases where it’s really important to give an officer the time away that they need to heal, to recover. And the key there is, have a strong support plan in place so that they can get back to work. I don’t want anyone left in limbo out there when they are taking time off for this sort of circumstance, where they either don’t have the support, or they don’t have the understanding of what is the pathway to getting back to work.
But the reality is, the vast majority of the time, these different stressors, these different symptoms, these different experiences over time, they can be dealt with as the officer continues to work. And that’s just my experience over time—it’s like 98%, probably, maybe even 99% of the time, as long as we’re getting ahead of it, and as long as there are good resources available, the vast majority of the time, this can be dealt with while the officer continues to work, and it doesn’t interfere with their ability to work.
But yes, there are these circumstances where someone really needs to—we got to honor the officer, they need some time away, and that’s going to be healthy. But again, let’s not leave them in limbo. Let’s give them lots of support resources, let’s give them the pathway back. And I’ll tell you this—one thing that’s so effective is peer support. There’s a lot of research showing peer support is helpful. Dr. Jack Dignan has done this research—nearly nine out of 10 employees report that peer support interactions are helpful or very helpful in addressing issues.
The majority of law enforcement, I believe, prefer peer support over all other forms of support. And the vast majority would recommend peer support to others. So, that’s a real important way to support officers while they’re still on the job, or if they’ve taken some time off the job. And also, culturally competent clinicians—very, very important.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, yeah. Well, again, thank you so much, Dr. David Black, founder of Cordico and the Mental Health and Wellness President of Lexipol Wellness Solutions. Appreciate your time and great talking with you again. We’re going to put some of these things in our show notes—our six segments on sleep and fitness and nutrition and alcohol and all of that, and some other things that you’ve been working on. So, appreciate your time today.
Dr. David Black: Wonderful, Jim. Thanks so much to you. A great show you put on here—really appreciate you, a lot of respect for the work you do, and thanks again to everyone listening for all you do to serve and protect. We appreciate you.
Jim Dudley: Thank you. Hey, to our listeners, check out the show notes for some of our references. Hope you enjoyed today’s show, and drop me a line at policingmatters@police1.com. Let me know what you think, or if you have a topic you’d like me to investigate, or if you have a talent, an expert like Dr. Black, that you’d like to hear from, and I will track them down and get them on the show.
All right, well, I hope you’ve been paying attention. I hope you do some of the things that we talked about today to get yourself squared away for work and dealing with your relationships and your home, concentrating on sleep and nutrition and all that other good stuff.
All right, take good care and hope to talk to you again real soon. Thanks so much for checking in.
