Paul: Joining me today for this podcast by Forensic Focus, I have a very eminent professor from the U.S. Professor Patrick Brady, would you like to introduce yourself, sir?
Patrick: Hi I am Patrick Brady. I am a professor in criminal justice and criminology at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs in the U.S, in Colorado.
Paul: In 2017, you released a paper which exclusively looked at the mental health effects of digital forensic investigators. What inspired you to focus on secondary traumatic stress and burnout among child exploitation investigators?
Patrick: Great question. I never thought in a million years that I would ever be looking into this topic.
A lot of it started in my childhood. My neighbour was kidnapped and she was never found. We were in the same grade and still to this day, she’s never been found. I just remember the response to the community and how they really emphasised stranger danger and things like that. I always thought that was a really interesting response.
I wanted to get better at research to figure out how we actually improve outcomes, but also the struggle of investigating when the crimes involve those that are most vulnerable. So, I went to school to study forensics and while I was going to school, I got a job supervising adolescents who had been adjudicated felony sex offences.
I didn’t even really know the full gamut of what they were charged with and convicted of and things like that. So, I worked there for two years and it really changed my whole perspective on the crimes, but also society in general.
I started to notice how it was really impacting my thinking outside of work and how I was really looking at things through a different mindset. So, while I was working there, I really enjoyed the job but, I knew it wasn’t going to be my future career.
I was fascinated with people that they do this on a regular basis, particularly the digital forensic examiners who are exposed to horrific videos, images sounds, and also the stories of these cases.
When I went to graduate school at Boise State, I really wanted to explore this idea of vicarious trauma, secondary traumatic stress and burnout, and more particularly, how can agencies support the people that are doing this work.
So, that we can have competent, but also healthy investigators who still enjoy what they do, still feel like they are being successful. Feeling like they have the capacity to do this work while still being mom outside of work or while still being dad and having a healthy quality of life at work and outside of work.
Working on a project with a family justice centre, and they also conducted forensic interviews of Children. My focus was on the domestic violence aspect of it. I was able to make some connections with forensic interviewers, and then also investigators who were investigating internet crimes against children.
I was able to make some connections and get a survey out both on a private Listserv for internet crimes against children task force members and those who were certified forensic interviewers that work for a child advocacy centre. I really wanted to explore, how this work impacts people who are in the room with children as they are disclosing and/or not disclosing these horrific things.
Also, the reasons why they’re not disclosing these things. One thing that was really interesting is some of the older victims were very keen to think, I don’t really want to talk about it because if I know if I did, dad’s going to get arrested and then my mom’s not going be able to afford rent.
So, I was interested in how those aspects really impacted the forensic interviewer, but more I was interested in the investigative aspect of it. Those who may not always have direct contact with the children, but were exposed to horrific images, child sexual abuse materials and the sounds with that.
More particularly, I was really interested in this work life balance. Like, how do people do this while also maintaining a good quality of life outside of work? I was really interested in the parental aspect of it, like, how do we actually get good measures and how do we actually get sound information?
I published a study that was looking at secondary traumatic stress, burnout and compassion fatigue. Like a lot of researchers, I think if I had known what I know now, I would have done the survey differently with some different measures, but I still feel like it really gave us some really interesting information on some of the correlates that increase these aspects.
Secondary traumatic stress and burnout tend to be the negative aspects of work and compassion satisfaction is tied to the positive aspects of it. One of the things I was focusing on was does being a parent increase your risk for negative mental health issues?
At the bivariate level, we did find that being a parent does increase secondary traumatic stress and burnout. But when we put it into complex. multivariable models, other factors tended to matter more, specifically prior trauma. That was really interesting because I do a lot of work in domestic violence.
One thing that domestic violence shelter managers tell me a lot of the time, is that whilst it’s great to have people who want to work in this field sometimes it’s hard because a lot of the people that are drawn to this field have backgrounds in it. Not everyone is always able to cope with their prior trauma and maintain a professional role in it.
One shelter manager was saying sometimes I’ll have a new advocate and they’ll be working with a client. Then all of a sudden, I have two individuals that are in crisis because whatever this person said had triggered the other one.
I was wondering if that was necessary or would it screw with investigators, because we have to realise that these are people too, who also have traumatic backgrounds. Whether that was a horrific car wreck, domestic violence or being a victim themselves and across some studies that tended to have a stronger impact over a lot, or being a parent.
That’s why we also ask open ended questions about how this work has really impacted them as a person but also outside of work and also what they want from their agencies.
The trauma factor was huge. A lot of the findings centred around, what are we doing in terms of the onboarding of these individuals? How we are getting them into these units?
10 years ago, a lot of investigators were telling me “I didn’t have a choice”. It was like, I drew the short straw. I had to go into this unit. Now, that is not the case. Now we’re starting to realise that, the negative impacts of this work. You really have to go into the unit with a specific kind of mindset and from what I’ve heard, it seems like agencies are doing a little bit better of a job onboarding them and getting them ready for this information.
Even then, what are we doing for their family members etc? I feel like the family members and friends of people who work in this field tend to be overlooked in terms of, providing support and resources.
When, we know across the board, what really helps buffer a lot of the negative effects of this work is social support that is both from colleagues, supervisors, administrators, but also the people outside of work. Whether they are involved in the field or not, they provide a space outside of work where they do not have to worry about the negative aspects.
Paul: And decompress from it.
Patrick: And decompress. So, from these studies, I got really interested in looking at stress and burnout in police officers. Especially those that were working on crimes against children, sexual violence. Cases that are really heart wrenching and complicated to investigate and how that really impacted things outside of work.
I ended up doing my dissertation on burnout among police chiefs to see, if this is happening among the frontline, what’s going on at the top? What I found among American police chiefs is that they experience a lot of the same stressors. They have some unique stressors because of their role.
Administrators are really the ones that can create the work environment. That’s going to help people thrive. So, understanding the negative aspects of not only the job, but the work environment are really important for administrators to pay attention to. Then also, what are we doing to connect family members and friends of our investigators so that they have a semblance of support outside of work.
What I was finding in a lot of the forensic investigators was, when they get off work, they wanted to relax. They wanted to decompress. They didn’t want to necessarily think about everything that’s going on and stuff.
Sometimes that’s really hard because family members start to pick up on the changes in the people that are investigating these cases. That they become both physically and emotionally distant.
That was really interesting in that the investigators were telling us, I don’t want to come home and I don’t want to talk about my day, one because my day was horrible because of the things that we do and two, I don’t want to burden my family members or traumatise them about this information.
At the same time, they become physically distant where they weren’t really hanging out with friends as much. If they were, it tended to be people that they worked with who did the same work.
That made sense because, nobody understands the work like that. The work we do like those who do it. One investigator said, I have to go to parties that my wife brings me to and I don’t like to tell people what I do because it’s it elicits different reactions. Sometimes you have people that are like, really into it and they want to hear everything and they’re like I don’t want to talk about work right now because of confidentiality, trauma.
Or two, it’s that they don’t like the police, or they think I’m a weirdo because I investigate child sexual abuse material, or, they want to tell me about their own story. That’s not the vibe. That’s not what I’m looking for. It seems like it’s very hard for them to get away from it and even though they’re proud of what they do, it’s a different sense of pride that is not always conveyed easily to others outside of the field.
That was really interesting. They just didn’t want to go to a lot of the things that their partners were asking them to come to.
A lot of the investigators were saying there’s a lot of things that I would normally do that I don’t do now. It’s hard to go to malls, it’s hard to go to parks, it’s hard to go to places where kids are playing. Even the sound of a kid screaming, it may be because they fell or because they’re excited and it can be triggering. It’s things that are triggers that they can’t always predict.
They’ll go to a kid’s birthday party and it could set them into a zone where they’re like, this looks exactly like one of the kids that are cases that we had and stuff and they start to see some of the victims in their own Children.
It also starts to impact their intimacy, nothing’s going to ruin the mood more than an image of child sexual abuse material coming in while you’re trying to be intimate with a spouse. There’s so many things outside of work that are so important for us to recuperate and to get our bodies back to a good state of not being hyper vigilant.
A lot of times these investigators and often parents in general are socialised to be a little bit more hyper vigilant and to look at things through a lens that normal people wouldn’t look at because that is how we catch these perpetrators.
Sex offenders are very manipulative. They not only manipulate the child but also their environment. What’s unfortunate for these investigators is they have to always think worst case scenario kind because that’s likely what’s happening.
So, while everyone else may think that this individual seems like a great person, he’s giving back to the community. The cop is looking at this person is like but he’s a boy scout leader. He’s also really involved in the youth group.
In cases they investigate there is a thing called vicarious trauma, which is where it rewires our brains in terms of how they view safety in the world. Not only for themselves, but for others.
Paul: It changes the view of the world completely doesn’t it.
Patrick: Absolutely and I think that is a key thing that we really need to ingrain, not only in policing, but those who work in the field in these high stress types of cases is that there’s no way that this information doesn’t change how you perceive the world. That’s why this information is really limited to a certain number of investigators who have the authority to get access and exposure to it because it is traumatizing.
When we look at studies and asking officers to rank what are your top 5 most frequent stressors, so things that they encounter on a regular basis, versus overall stressors. Overall stressors, are going to be, number one, witnessing crimes against children. Granted, those are not the majority of the calls that they go to, but when they do go to them and it is particularly heart wrenching. Also, it’s like officer involved shootings.
The more frequent stressors were like family violence, which can include child abuse. When cases are involving children, especially younger children and children who are being abused by people that the child is supposed to socialise to believe to love and respect.
So, an investigator, you have to look at things through a worst case scenario. That cannot be healthy, but that might be a better way to pick up on things that the average person would not that the perpetrator is trying to manipulate.
That weighs a lot on these investigators. I was also interested in what are some things that would help them cope with this work? What are some things that you would like your agency to help you with? What I realised is I did this when I was working on my master’s thesis, since then I’ve gone on and got my PhD and a lot better research, like I said, I would use a bunch of different measures now.
Even just the coping mechanisms. It’s hard because coping is very subjective. My takeaway is how you deal with this work. It should be something that you enjoy, that doesn’t always feel like a chore and that takes your mind off of work.
So, whether that is working out, spending time with your kids, doing things that aren’t going to quote unquote, I hate using that word trigger, but that’s exactly what it is. It’s not the fault of the investigators, because the triggers are inherent, right? It’s our amygdala, it’s our lower part of our brain sensing threats before our cognitive part of our brain can recognise it.
Sometimes there are things that the officer is not even thinking about that just triggers it and they don’t necessarily know why. So, one is being able to take care of themselves.
When we are talking about the onboarding process, the people who are applying to this unit, what is their stress management program and do they have one? That should be one of the first questions. If not, what are we doing in the agency? Do we have a wellness coordinator?
Do we have supervisors that are equipped to help officers understand, okay, we’re working in this unit. There’s pros and cons, but a lot of the cons are really going to mess with you mentally. So, you need to get into a routine where you are taking breaks from work etc. That’s taking care of them outside of work and that’s everything that you could think of that everyone else does to cope with work. Running, activities and eating healthy etc.
Internally, these investigators can’t always control their work environment. They cannot control the workload. They cannot control the content that they are exposed to. It is a necessary evil to have people that are investigating these cases to be proactive and respond in ways that we can to protect children.
A lot of that relies on supervisors and administrators. What I learned when I was looking at the research on burnout with police chiefs is that we really need leaders who are focused on the wellbeing of the people that are doing the work for them.
They call this a health oriented leadership. I personally feel this needs to be something that we consider in terms of promotion and people going into supervisory roles. What is your strategy for helping others cope with this information? How do you deal with crisis intervention?
What are some things that you are personally modelling self-care and stress management? What are you doing to improve the work environment? Are you advocating for, maybe some of the advanced software that can help with filtering?
I know there’s a lot more technologies now and they’re advancing so quickly that I can’t even tell you specifics about them, but a lot of AI programming are streamlining caseloads to really narrow down. I.e., if you get a whole cache of images, like AI can identify specific, nudity, child pornography potentially, and things like that.
Granted, we’re still working on the reliability of these aspects, but are there ways that we can save time and not have investigators go through all these horrific images and videos etc. Use technology to pinpoint the aspects of an image or a video that are necessary for a search warrant or for the criminal offense etc. So that officers aren’t constantly exposed to the horrific-ness of this.
So, our supervisors advocating for improvements in technology, improvements in software. To what extent are supervisors conveying to administrators what their unit does and helping them understand that, this isn’t just a picture of a kid in a bathtub. This exploitation material is horrific.
We now have a ton of research which shows that it is an occupational hazard to be doing this work, but because it is a necessary evil, because it violates crimes, we need healthy, competent people to do this work. The competency aspect is hard too, because technology is continually changing.
Paul: And the training has to keep up to date with that as well, doesn’t it?
Patrick: Yes, and there’s an article that was looking at job stress and policing and they were looking at the number of publications over the years. Really wasn’t into 2010 that we started to see so many more publications.
So, the health and wellness of officers in general is now becoming a stronger priority in a lot of agencies that were mostly focused on the frontline officers. Some of us have been doing the work with the digital forensic investigators, here and there but sometimes that’s not even being caught on the radar.
Agencies will hire wellness coordinators etc, they will hire counsellors with the idea that these are for everyone, but also, what are we doing to create specialised preventative mechanisms in terms of what they’re exposed to?
How do we work with officers who are struggling with this information? I’ve noticed that a lot more supervisors and commanders are now requiring officers who work on a child abuse unit or digital forensics to go see a counsellor. They don’t care if they go there and they don’t say anything, but at least once or twice a year, they have to go see a counsellor.
I’m a big proponent of that and as much as I don’t like to force people to go into therapy because ultimately, cognitive behavioural therapy and these different types of modalities, they require people to be in a space where they’re ready to process prior traumas or what’s going on.
How are we preparing officers? To be vulnerable and to talk about, yeah, this information is hard and I’m struggling with this case. I might need a couple of days to take some time. Then again, going to the counsellor’s in, especially in the US across the board, officers are constantly concerned that they’re going to get their firearm taken away.
So, if they are having suicide ideation etc, legally, they could be a threat to themselves or others, even though if they don’t think that. So, a lot of officers are very hesitant on what they convey. Whether it’s to an in house psychologist or not.
The other thing too, is do we have psychologists working with police officers or available to officers in the community or non-sworn officers? There’s the digital forensics investigators, that know the information that they view. Do they understand what child sexual abuse material is?
A lot of social workers, therapists are really good at understanding trauma, how trauma impacts the brain, how to work with it, but not necessarily the indirect trauma that comes from listening, reading, hearing about these cases and being regularly exposed to it.
Even in the 2017 article, one of the strongest predictors was the indirect exposure. Generally, it is not the content that stresses officers out. It’s the things that they can’t necessarily control. Officers understand yes, I have to respond to car wrecks. Yes, I have to respond to domestic violence. I can figure out how to compartmentalise this information.
It’s the indirect exposures where you’re constantly hearing about cases from others. It seems like these cases are never ending. You think you’ve heard everything before, but then all of a sudden, there’s a horrific case or a child homicide that really sticks with these officers and it’s the idea that they can’t get away with it.
That goes back to my argument about the importance of social support outside of work. The other thing is officers are inherently sceptical of the people that they talk to. It’s very hard for officers to be vulnerable, both male and female officer, because of the potential ramifications. Not only from other officers perceiving them to be weak or not able to hack it versus that they might be a liability or that they might get their firearm taken away
Then they’re not going to have enough staff etc. The other thing is that as much as person could be like, listen, we have privilege communications etc, you don’t necessarily know what’s going to be shared with internal affairs or administrators. So, it’s really hard.
I think that goes back to what are we doing from the top down. To what extent do administrators in agencies are they aware of what a digital forensic investigator does on a regular basis?
Paul: Are they aware of what they’ve seen, you know.
Patrick: Yes, and also do they know that the people that are doing that work? How often are they stopping and talking to them? What drives a lot of stress is the immediate supervisor and the overall administration.
Officers and people that do this work generally are like, if I have a supportive supervisor, I really enjoy my colleagues, you could shovel poop for a job, but if you like the people that you’re working with, and successes and things you enjoy about the job, then, even sometimes the gruelling aspects could be tolerable.
But, if you have a supervisor that is micromanaging, that is more concerned about budget or how many forensic interviews versus the quality of forensic interviews.
Paul: Or number of jobs going through the department.
Patrick: Yeah. That impacts the people that are doing this work. So, what helps officers is having supervisors and administrators that advocate for them, that know who they are, that can pick up on when the person may not be coping adequately or the work might be impacting them.
That’s from police chiefs to the top brass and also to the criminal investigation supervisors etc. Sometimes that’s a lot harder when you work for these larger agencies where it’s almost impossible to know everyone.
I personally feel that the special victim’s units, the vulnerable units. Those are the people that we want to implement strategies that keep them healthy, still enjoying their job and recognise that their work is valuable and that they’re supported in this job.
Paul: Yep. You have to supply that correct support, that correct level of support to maintain those investigators mental health.
Patrick: Absolutely. What’s great now is that because mental health and wellness is becoming a much more common focus in agencies, it’s so awesome to go to trainings now and officers say, I was talking to my therapist the other day and he was saying this.
It’s cool to see. These are supervisors and police chiefs who are engaging in that health oriented leadership while they’re modelling vulnerability in a way. A lot of times policing tends to be very masculine, true masculinity is being, having a good emotional IQ and being able to pick up on how you’re feeling in the moment.
For example, viewing a video of a horrific child rape, we should be more concerned if you weren’t impacted by that video. So, normalizing the idea that this work is hard, and that this will change their perception of safety and society, both in work and outside of work, and not only for themselves, but for their family members and people that they care about.
Supervisors play a huge role in creating an environment where people can enjoy what they do and feel healthy while they do it. Individuals really need to create a work life balance. I’m not saying don’t hang out with other police officers or don’t hang out with people that work in the criminal justice field. That’s not what I’m saying at all.
It’s finding ways that you’re not constantly talking about work, or if you are, using humour in appropriate ways. I love hanging out with police officers, because all of them could be standup comedians. They have the worst humour and it is so funny at times, just because they know how to pick up on the obscurities of society.
Those are things that are important to maintain wellbeing. Where we start to see the issues is if the jokes use the victim as the punchline. The victim should never be a punchline. That is an indicator of the secondary traumatic stress.
It’s a tough question because we need people to do this work, but this work is horrific. It is so hard and if we are not providing adequate support and resources necessary.
The other thing is technology, right?
So, our supervisors advocating for technology that helps reduce what they’re being exposed to. There’s a technique called face first, where you just have the image of the face and everything else is pixelated. So, if you’re not needing to look for any specific marks or indicators, where you don’t necessarily have to see penetration or nudity in the child. You could just focus on what you need to focus on in that.
But even then, like in policing, we have a bunch of technology in policing, but none of that technology talks to each other and that technology is five years outdated versus this. So even when technology gets updated, are we providing the adequate training necessary for officers to use the updates and know the different features etc? Working with police, they want change, but they hate change at the same time. It’s really hard in that sense.
I think it’s also important to create opportunities and for family members to get to know one another. So that, if they are struggling with something like my partner seems to be a lot more emotionally distant, getting support and feedback from other families being like, hey, that’s a normal thing, it’s a part of this job, have you tried this or different things like that.
Where, they can feel support as well because that’s the thing, when somebody becomes a sworn police officer, we have to realise that family becomes a sworn police officer. They’re part of the police family and we need to be taking care of them.
Paul: You’ve mentioned so much that I want to talk. From my point of view, I should tell you, I served 30 years in the police force here in the UK, and I spent 14 of those years working as a digital forensic investigator. 90 percent of my work was working with child abuse cases.
So, I got it every day and you’ve said a couple of really interesting things there. Firstly, you mentioned the sounds that you hear when you are looking at the videos. I think that’s something that the general public aren’t really aware of and they don’t take into consideration the role of the digital forensic investigator.
They have to sit there and listen to hundreds, if not thousands of children screaming at times. That, as you quite rightly say, has a massive impact on their mental health. The other thing you mentioned of real interest to me, because I think it’s a hugely under researched area, is the effect that it has on the families of the digital forensic investigators as well.
As your studies pointed out secondary traumatic stress, burnout, depression, etc. They are all mental health issues that DFIs can become susceptible to and when they do, that has an impact on the family. The family have to watch that DFI very sadly going downhill. I’m actually going to release an article on forensic focus about that this month.
It’s actually co-written by my wife and it’s her view watching the effects of working in this profession and how that affected me because I just think it’s important to share that.
Patrick: That is something that we don’t have a lot of research on, the family members of not only officers, but people who do this work and the vicarious trauma is real. There are studies where they interview the officer and then the spouse of the officer and the officer is like no, I don’t think this work impacts me outside of work, I feel like I can cope pretty well. I try to keep them separate from it.
Then when you ask the family members and the spouse are like he’s completely different now that he’s in this unit or as a police officer and not necessarily in a bad way, but family members are very receptive, especially if they knew them before they got into policing or before they got into certain units.
They notice a change in the behaviours because these are the people that love and care about you most. They’re going to be the ones that pick up on the burnout and the stress much more than the officer who’s actually experiencing it.
I would love to read that because I think that’s so smart. I would love to do it more studies where we are getting the side of the family members, especially the children of officers who do this.
I think that’s really interesting because one of the things that I found it when I asked them, how has this impacted your relationships with your children? Forensic interviewers would say it was easier when they were younger because they would just say no, you’re not going to do that because I’m dad and dad says so, or I’m mom and mom says so.
When they start to get older and they started to become teenagers, that’s when they want to know why can’t I go over to so and so’s house? Why can’t I go over to the sleepover? Why can’t I have a smartphone?
I collected this data in 2011. So, most of them didn’t have smartphones, but now every kid has a smartphone and the main negative aspect of this with the parent aspect is hypervigilance and being overly protective.
So, the kids start to get really frustrated. Then when other kids start to know that their parent is a cop, there’s like kids that are like, let’s get him drunk. Let’s get him to do drugs etc. So, there’s this additional pressure on them that stresses out the kids.
We had an investigator say, I come home after a hard day and my kids are arguing over the remote and to me that’s a dumb thing to argue about. I just investigated a case where a kid was raped by his dad and that kid is damaged forever. Then I come home and my kids are arguing about something so dumb. They’re almost taking the stress from the work out on their kids as well, and making them so hyper vigilant that it can create negative relationships.
Granted, we found a good number of people that found doing this work actually made them a better parent. It made them much more open with their kids focusing on developing healthy relationships younger in life. So, when they get to the 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, where they don’t want anything to do with parents, they still recognise and respect their parents and know that they can go to them about tough things.
The other aspect that we have to understand is when we think about child sexual abuse materials, a lot of times we are thinking about that 0 to 10. We aren’t always focused on the idea that from 10 to 18, a lot of those perpetrators are their own peers. So, talking to them about healthy relationships etc, trying to build that closeness early on, so when teens do the natural kind of separation, they still recognise that they can go to their parent in their time of need.
But, if they recognise that dad is very quiet, doesn’t want to talk about problems, or mom is really stressed out from work, then they don’t feel comfortable going to that.
At the same time, what are we doing for the officers and investigators that are doing this work? What I learned doing this is that officers had experienced everything I was talking about, but they didn’t know the words to it. They didn’t know what vicarious trauma was. They didn’t know secondary traumatic stress is.
Just like being an alcoholic and recognising what’s going on is the first step into, developing healthier coping mechanisms. We need to help the people doing the work recognise these symptoms and also their family members so that they can be a tune.
Instead of feeling so lost in terms of how to help this person that they love, they have terms and ideas about what’s potentially going on. Not necessarily to diagnose them, but to find support. I’m sure there’s tons of blogs out there from family members of police officers, forums. I would imagine that there are support groups out there where family members can find more information.
Granted, is that information accurate and helpful? Different story. Also, how do we go about doing this in a way that officers and family members would be vulnerable enough to share struggles and conflicts because there’s bound to be potentially some illegal activity etc.
That’s why it’s really hard to do domestic violence studies with police officers etc. Even though domestic violence rates are not higher among police officers than the general public, and neither are divorce rates. They’re all the same. There’s one study that looked all about it. I think it was one in five officers have been involved in domestic violence. It was about 20 percent.
Granted, I’m always concerned that when I’m interviewing a cop’s kid and then there’s like a disclosure that comes, whether it was from the family or another person, and having to navigate that. Granted, we know how to deal with those from the research standpoint. The long story short, what I’m trying to say is we need this research, but that’s a challenging avenue of research, especially getting agencies on board with it.
The legal department, they don’t love my questions about domestic violence or perpetration because they may trust me because we have a working relationship, but they never know if there’s going to be a headline, oh, X percent of these officers engaged in.
I’m really passionate about this in the way I want to hear everything so we can figure out like what’s working, what’s not working etc. Whilst at the same time, understanding that this is sensitive information to be asking about.
Maybe you could shed light on, do officers that do this work feel like they are a lot more in tune with their emotions and recognise that this work is difficult. That it can stress them out? Compared to other officers that might be in the drug unit or community oriented policing or something along those.
Paul: I think they do, but do they know how to handle it? Do they know how to proactively decompress? No, they don’t because there’s no teaching around that. There’s no training given to them around that.
Patrick: Yeah, and I think you’re so right. Do they know how to cope with it outside of drinking themselves to sleep or using other mind altering substances etc?
Because that obviously makes it a whole lot worse etc. We are starting to see a lot of research on mindfulness now. I downloaded the Headspace app because I was talking to a lot of officers about burnout and how they should engage in mindfulness and in the empirical validity of it. But I didn’t necessarily know what mindfulness was.
I have ADD. My brain is going flat out and so it was really hard to sit down for 10 minutes and focus on my breathing etc. Within three months though, dramatic changes. I felt like I was less aggressive in traffic etc. So, how are agencies incorporating mindfulness into this work?
One of the key things that investigators told us that helps is taking breaks frequently throughout work. So, maybe some of those breaks should be like a mindfulness break where they need to do the 10 minutes from headspace. Go for a walk.
Some commanders were telling us they don’t want their officers looking at CSAM material 2 hours before they go home. Taking the breaks, allowing time to take breaks and ending investigators to good trainings, that are not webinars. We have the conference of crimes against children here. It was always in Dallas. Now they have a whole internet crimes against children conference thing.
It’s the same thing with academics. We love to go to these boring research conferences because that’s really exciting, we get new ideas, are able to socialise with people who do this work, can understand the stressors and it’s fun to be able to learn new things in New Orleans or a different area.
These are the individuals that we really should be investing in and keeping them healthy and sending them to advanced training. I understand that officers do a lot of training, but the specialised training, whether that’s Cellebrite training etc. Get them out of the office and into a learning environment.
Another thing is how are we supporting officers in terms of financial wellness? A lot of agencies promote that they’ll pay for you to go to college etc.
This goes back to the health oriented leadership. It is focusing on putting supervisors and administrators in these positions that care about the wellbeing of their employees and by advocating for things that show the employees that they care.
One study that looked at work family policies. What was interesting is that a lot of the people didn’t actually use the policies, but they liked that they existed because it sent a message from the administrators that they care about them. So, how often are administrators conveying, make sure you take time for yourself, or every Friday now, we’re going to wear jeans and then blow bubbles off the building.
That sounds dumb, but it’s something that takes their mind out of it, it shows that the agency is caring and recognises that this information is really hard.
Paul: What’s your views on the stigma within policing around mental health? I know certainly here in the UK, there is an awful lot of research, which identifies that within police forces there is a large amount of stigma relating to it. Officers are worried about seeking help for mental health issues because they’re worried it comes back later on and it prevents them from being promoted or moving to another job.
Is that the case in the States?
Patrick: Yeah, it still is. What’s awesome is we are getting a lot of great research coming out about women in policing and women in specialised units. These are all interviews that happened within the past five years, and it’s still a very masculine environment especially women getting into SWAT. It’s a lot better than it was, and you do have a lot of officers that recognise the value of vulnerability and, diversity and things etc.
But even the women that are going in to this are still being challenged. They’re being tested to see whether or not they can cut it kind of thing. So, granted that may be more of a specialised, unit. But I think the more that we are normalising health and wellness in officers. Officers are so tired of hearing like a self-care plan etc.
But are we doing training and workshops to help them develop a selfcare plan? I think we need to be identifying people who are formal and informal leaders within the agency. Maybe someone on patrol that is not a supervisor in any capacity, but has influence over others. How can we identify some of these?
Influential individuals within an agency, pull them in for training and then train them on secondary traumatic stress, burnout and how peer coaching etc. So, when they go back to their own units, they can influence. They can normalise the importance of doing this by encouraging them to use to demonstrate and model selfcare as well.
In the United States, a lot of agencies are going towards allowing officers to be able to work out on shift and so they get paid to work out. I would like to see that being extended to civilians as well, especially digital forensic examiners who may not be sworn, to also have that opportunity to take a break and go work out, to go engage in mindfulness.
Up in Fort Collins, Colorado, they’ve had an in house psychiatrist for 30 years. He just retired, but everyone in that agency wants to go talk to Dr Dan, that is a normal aspect of it. This is because they have a lot of leadership that is really focused on health and wellbeing.
A lot of the issues in policing in terms of masculinity is you have to be tough etc, but being tough is also being mentally tough as well. Being able to know when you are starting to experience these things and being open to hearing others feedback about, for example hey, I’ve noticed this is going on etc. Emphasizing the importance of that.
Paul: You have just talked there about the psychiatrist who had been in that role for 30 years.
How important do you think the continuity of talking to the same person about mental health issues is? Does that make it easier for someone who is suffering mental health issues to really open up to someone?
Patrick: Yes, I would think so, one is because he has that institutional knowledge. He also has two offices. He has one in the police department, and then he has one that is not connected to any public building. So, officers don’t necessarily have to be seen going to see him.
The fact that he is a police psychologist as his background, he has that unique institutional knowledge that if officers aren’t opening up, he can ask questions in ways that can help them maybe potentially talk about some of the things that they are dealing with. As he’s heard it from these officers and he’s heard everything about how this work impacts them personally outside of work etc.
I think that’s really helpful. Plus, he is not a police officer, but he can understand the unique stressors and traumas that are part of this.
For rural agencies where we’re starting to see a lot more of the telehealth and a hotline that can connect to a therapist wherever. It goes back to the idea of if you’re 25 years in policing, you go to a counsellor and it’s a 23 year old that just graduated with their social work degree and has never really worked in policing. Trying to talk about indirect traumas from child sexual abuse materials like that may not be within their wheelhouse.
People who are in crisis and trauma pick up really quick; this person doesn’t know what I’m talking about or doesn’t get what I’m talking about. But at the same time, I would love to see more officers as social workers where agencies are paying for them to go get their degrees in Counselling and social work so that we have more people that recognise the stressors of policing.
Who are equipped to provide clinical support. They may not be police officers anymore, but they work in these agencies as counsellors and social workers to help officers.
Paul: Someone with lived experience, but who is also qualified to deliver support.
Patrick: This is not to say that people who don’t have a lived experience of policing are not qualified to support. I’m talking specifically about that Child sexual abuse material is a different type of trauma to other types of traumas that can occur in policing.
It’s helpful to have people that are very aware of that. I would question how many trauma programs are really focusing on the indirect aspects of it, because I think that so many times, we are dealing with clients that are victims of crime. They have the PTSD versus someone that is has never been directly exposed but every day I have to hear the sounds of these children etc.
How can we train people to specialise in that? I feel that every station should have a station dog, which is a support dog that just hangs out and go and walks around. Not even a therapy dog, just more of a support dog.
It’s a trained dog. It’s not just a lab running around doing nothing, but it’s a therapy or support. I know that there are differences. I’m not entirely sure, but we’re starting to see a lot more agencies get small grants to have a dog in the station to help especially in the dispatch area, which are our emergency 911 callers.
I just read a study; it was an experimental design to see whether having a dog in a child forensic interview helps reduce stress. They took cortisol samples of children before and after and those that did and did not have the dog. They found that stress levels were dramatically decreased when they were able to be in there petting a dog.
I feel like that would be really important for officers as well. I need to go see, the psychiatrist, but if he had a dog there and can be petted, that might be more encouraging or helpful for that officer to open up.
Paul: It’s very interesting you say that, because I now work as a psychologist within the NHS here in England.
One of the things I’ve just finished is a therapy dog evaluation with patients within the facility where I work. The early outcomes from that, because I haven’t finished analysing all the data are incredibly positive. Incredibly so. The difference it makes is really significant.
How do you think your research can influence policing on the type of support that they provide?
Patrick: I think it provides more credence to the normalisation of the importance of taking care of ourselves and our families. I think the message is something that officers can resonate with.
Sometimes it makes sense on face value that this information and this material would be hard, but actually to show them data. I always like to do the mixed method studies where you have the numbers, but then you also have the quotes to help support it.
I can send you the slides that I do in my burnout training that has some of the quotes from other studies that we’ve done. Which speak to individuals and their experiences. I was interested in this topic and when I started doing this training it was like a light bulb moment realising that’s what it is or okay, it is a thing.
I think this research that you’re doing and others are doing in this area is really important because it’s empirical science to help the administrative naysayers who are not concerned to show that this is an occupational hazard. You, as an employer have an obligation to keep employees as safe as possible.
This is a risk factor for severe mental health issues and burnout. We already have an issue with recruitment, retention and policing. If we are not investing in our investigators and our officers who are working these cases, we are just going to have burned out officers. They’ll serve in this unit for five years, rotate, but the body keeps score of traumas, right? Everything that happened to them now travels with them to the next unit and it doesn’t fix things outside of work.
If we are not investing in preventative aspects from onboarding as well as asking, what are we doing when officers retire? This is very similar to officers getting out of the military where so much of their life was identified within the military. It’s the same with policing.
When you’re doing this work, I quickly had to realise that when I started working with the sex offenders, I’d be like, oh my God, this crazy thing happened. I’d start talking about it, and I just see the faces of others. I’d realise not everyone wants to talk about child abuse at the Chilli’s.
I had to quickly realise there’s a time and a place and not everyone is thrilled about this. When that is so much of your life and then all of a sudden, you’re done, you’re retired, you have all those thoughts and it’s a big transition.
What are agencies doing to help people when they are retiring and developing support systems after because it could be very lonely after policing. Especially when you’re not surrounded by a lot of other officers.
Paul: But the other thing is, are agencies supplying that mechanism where they wind the officers down, decompress them and give them the coping strategies they need to continue? I don’t think so.
Patrick: No, not to the extent that they need to be. I’m comfortable saying that because I definitely have seen good examples of agencies doing well, but that’s not the majority of agencies. Policing is a government agency resources are limited.
The other issue too is with staffing, especially officers that have the investigative skills to do this work. It’s hard even if you had programs to help, Officers wind down before they go home for work, there may be so many cases that the officers are like, I can’t engage in this right now because I have so many cases and it’s overwhelming, it’s hard.
I honestly feel like it it’s going to take a whole culture change within policing which I’m very optimistic about. Especially younger officers, because the people that are going into policing now are the most educated that they’ve ever been. They very are attuned, but it’s Gen Z and below, it’s all the anxious generations.
These are individuals who are coming into policing, are already addicted to screens, have overprotective parents etc, and they already have these anxious, depression aspects of it.
So, even though they’re educated and they understand the importance of wellbeing etc, how are we ensuring that people are taking care of themselves without violating personal privacy etc? I’m optimistic about it, but I would like to see a lot more.
But I am an academic who sits in an ivory tower being saying, it’d be great if they had a therapy dog, right?
It’s easier said than done. I love talking to people in the field because they’re the ones boots on the ground that recognise what would and would not work. That’s why I don’t feel like academics can solve this alone.
We have to develop these researcher practitioner partnerships that are about trust and mutual goals in figuring out things like how do we reduce suicides. How do we improve the wellbeing of officers so that we can have people who are competent doing this. That also deserve their life outside of work, being healthy and with family and friends, enjoying life.
Paul: What specific changes would you recommend for law enforcement to support digital forensic investigators?
Patrick: That’s a good question, because I’m a researcher, I definitely think that more government support for research with digital forensic investigators and agencies being willing enough to work with researchers to help figure out what works so that we can develop polices or programs. Something that other agencies can adopt and adapt to help their officers as well.
I think more funding for training outside of the office and out of the state, potentially. More specialised training where they can go and mingle with other forensic investigators for a weekend, learn some new skills and bring that back.
I think promotion needs to have a health orientated leadership component of it. A lot of times, during promotions, they ask about their leadership style and their strategy. I’ve added that too, in terms of the promotion. That’s something I always put in there. For example, this is the only candidate that even mentioned anything about mental health or health of the officers etc and the others were focused so much more on physical health versus the mental health.
I feel we need to have more supervisors that are well rounded, not only understanding leadership, but also how do you be a leader among individuals who are likely to be in crisis and/or easily triggered by some of the information because of the nature of the content.
Then what does that look like in their agency? How can we help those supervisors learn from other supervisors? So, definitely more support. My last recommendation would be more support for family and friends. People who do this work to the point that they don’t necessarily have to know everything that they’re exposed to, but they know that it is traumatic information that potentially can change their personality and behaviour.
What can we do to be a supportive person in that role? We collected data with police chiefs and asked them if they were in a relationship and whether they were in a relationship with another police officer, someone that worked in the field of criminal justice or someone that didn’t deal with this at all.
I wanted to see if that impacted stress and burnout. It didn’t. What impacted stress and burnout was being single. Granted, with police chiefs it’s already lonely at the top, I couldn’t imagine, dating is hard enough, but dating as a police chief in a small town would probably be even more rough.
It’s the same for officers. We need human interaction. We need support from others. What I got from that is it didn’t necessarily matter about whether they fully knew what was going on. They were a partner that could provide different types of emotional and social support. Helping them realise, helping them feel more human in a world that doesn’t always feel human.
Paul: Do you think there’s adequate resources assigned to supporting DFIs?
Patrick: No, I don’t think so. That’s hard, right? Because the bulk of a police department’s budget is personnel and so everything on top of that is really trying to figure it out.
I think that speaks more to the government’s role in providing funding not necessarily things like research grants, but grants for agencies to develop a wellness program. Try different things out and we’re seeing that now. Every RFP that comes out for federal funding now has some officer safety and wellness aspect of it, which I think is great.
I want to see more of it. I want to see more efforts to help grant writers and people within agencies to write these grants so that they can get it. Writing grants is insane and it takes a lot of time and officers aren’t always grant managers etc.
I just think if society is concerned about turnover and policing, we need to start investing and streamlining trauma within agencies. Focusing on the units where trauma is most likely to be present.
That’s going to be your elder abuse, your vulnerable victim unit. It’s not picking favourites but providing additional resources to those units. So that they have the adequate software, they have the adequate technology, they have the training and also have the support both inside work and outside of work.
Paul: I think one final question because I have taken up quite a bit of your time.
Patrick: I’m on break. I don’t even go back to work until two weeks. I could talk to you for hours.
Paul: What further research do you feel is needed in this area?
Patrick: Definitely perceptions of family members. Perceptions of family members, but also longitudinal research. We need to measure these factors from the same individuals over time and isolate the things that they’re doing that reduce and increase that stress. That goes back to a recommendation about increased funding for research with these agencies.
I’ve been very lucky. I really have not come across a supervisor or commander that doesn’t agree with the need for research. So, it’s nice that a lot of these agencies are becoming more willing to work with researchers in those areas and the longitudinal aspects of it.
I would love to do a lot more focus groups with people that do the work to address social support, what that is, what that looks like and what they want.
Paul: And how they can use that.
Patrick: Absolutely. What are the strategies to implement that? I would love to interview people who score very low on burnout and secondary traumatic stress to see what they doing, that might be unique.
I always love to ask officers whatever I’m studying. What would you tell yourself, when you first started, about this? Usually it’s about stress and burnout. What would you have told yourself when you were getting into this unit to help cope with the reality? Knowing what you know now, what would you have liked to tell yourself?
How would you help onboard future officers getting into this role, kind of thing? I don’t want officers to scare others away because some officers were straight up, I don’t want anything to do with the crimes against Children. I fully understand that, but the ones that are interested in doing it, hopefully for the right reasons, let’s build them and get them the experience and training. Also, the reality to understand that this is not a walk in the park, this is intense.
So, definitely more research to understand the social support more and research on perceptions outside of it. I would even love to do a survey of just administrators of agencies that have a child abuse unit or a ICAC unit to see, do they even know what they do.
Paul: Yeah, what’s their understanding of what’s going on at the coalface.
Patrick: Yes, because I feel like that is the kind of research that’s really going to be enlightening for other administrators. Other administrators, they may think I thought I knew what they did or how often are they checking in? Do they even know their digital forensic investigators etc?
Granted, it’s not their job to be their counsellor, but it’s even just stopping by showing face, helping them recognise that they are valued and supported within the agency. Those are the leaders that we want. I don’t think the majority of administrators would know the nature and extent of the work that you do.
That’s no shade on them. They have a lot of meetings. They’re busy. My recommendation to all police officers is to never become a police chief. That sounds awful but those are necessary positions. More research in general is needed.
I would love to figure out a way that we can help officers who are struggling with suicide ideology that doesn’t require them to relinquish their weapon. I know that’s easier said than done and that’s not really my wheelhouse in terms of the ethical aspects of all that. But I think the more that we implement leaders who care about the wellness of their employees, the more that we’re going to change cultures within agencies.
That’s the thing across the board, across the world, every single agency has their own unique culture that is so different to the town over. It’s one of those things where you have to be realistic.
I’m good with one agency at a time. One agency changing something to improve the lives of the officers that are working for those agencies. Hopefully that information spreads throughout the state, throughout the world. Making research more digestible to people in the field.
Paul: In plain language as opposed to complicated language that people don’t want to read.
Patrick: Yes, and easy, like a one to two page handout for administrators, because everyone’s busy. We want a summary. Now that we have AI and different etc, there’s so many ways that we can make information digestible to officers. I think roll call training would be really helpful as well.
Every now and then just reminding officers these are the two components of burnout. These are the symptoms. Here are some things to look at. That could be a five minute video. It could be a corny animation, but it would be something that helps officers remind them. The other thing too is officers are interested in this.
Even though they don’t necessarily think about stress management, some officers are really healthy. They like to work out, but every person who’s probably held a badge and a gun recognises the dangers and the stress that can come from this job. I would imagine that they’re all open to solutions and suggestions that seem realistic and feasible to actually help them cope with this job.
Paul: It’s actually quite interesting. One of the things that you’ve just mentioned again, there was the training within the sort of role call time when cops are coming onto shift.
One of things that I’ve done here in the UK is create a booklet. Which explains what the signs and symptoms are that DFIs may become susceptible to. What they look like, how they affect you and how you can deal with them. I’ve distributed that to various forces and companies within the UK.
The feedback I’ve got from that has been really positive because, as you are quite rightly identified, many people don’t know how to put a label on it or what to do. I found that quite cathartic doing it. I’ll be honest.
Patrick: Good, because it’s hard. The other thing is finding correct information because still at this point in 2025, we still don’t have consistent definitions on what secondary traumatic stress is, compassion fatigue etc.
That drives me nuts. Even though I try to outline it in that article, there are succinct things, I’ve been burnt out before, and it’s very scary because you feel like your life’s over, you don’t know how to do this work.
Specifically from doing this research, it really can get to you. Then you go on vacation, you come back and you’re still exhausted. Burnout is a lot harder to deal with than we think.
That’s why I feel we need to be a lot more proactive getting people to help everyone else in the agency. Look out for one another and recognise. For example, if you have an officer that you think is crappy at their job or irritable, things like these are all indicators of potentially some type of stress that’s going on. Do we have supervisors that can hold them accountable but in a respectful way that encourages them to take care of themselves, go see the therapist etc?
Paul: But do we have the supervisors who are qualified enough to recognise those signs and symptoms and the, direct that person to the help that they need?
Patrick: And do others respect and support that person that gets the supervisor role because the distributive justice is another predictor turnover in policing.
So, if officers feel promotion is big among officers and a lot of the consistent complaints across police departments is that they feel like supervisors play favourites, the people that get into these roles are the friends of others. So, there’s not due process or easy way to do that kind of thing. I feel like there’s better criteria.
Especially if this person scored 10 out of 10 on the health and wellness, even though you don’t like them, this is the kind of person that cares about the unit.
It’s easier said than done. That’s why I like being an academic, saying thanks for having me on your podcast, please do all the things I say.
Paul: Before we stop the recording, I’ve noticed that you have recently been doing an awful lot of research around stalking?
Patrick: Yes.
Paul: I would love to do this again but target it at the research that you’ve been doing around stalking because that is a very big, very hot topic over here right now.
Patrick: Don’t you threaten me with a good time because that’s another topic that I love to talk about. Another thing that I’ve realised too is that I’ve done so much training where the officers come in to do stalking domestic violence training and at the end it’s a line out the door.
We cannot be upset about officers doing something that they’re not getting adequate training in. So many officers don’t get adequate training in stalking, but what’s awesome is the UK, England, Wales, Australia are 10 years ahead of the research. Not only this, but stalking domestic violence. I’m learning so much from you all.
I would love to talk to you about that in terms of the investigative standpoint, why victims contact the police, why they participate in the cases, what the motives of offenders are, how we can identify stalking cases and help officers put the pieces together. But that’s for another time.
Paul: I’ll arrange that. I’ll come back to you and I’ll arrange that for another time. Professor, I want to say how grateful I am for the time that you’ve given me today. I’m sure the viewers in Forensic Focus will really appreciate the advice, the guidance, the knowledge that you’ve shared. Thank you very much.
Patrick: Of course, and if any of your listeners want access to the articles, I have no problem. They can contact me; I can give you my information, I have no problem sending that to them because sometimes they’re behind paywalls. That’s another frustrating thing about making research digestible and accessible to the people that need it the most.
Paul: I’ll make sure the readers are aware of that.
Patrick: Perfect. Thank you so much.
Paul: Thank you.
