Desi: Welcome all to the Forensic Focus Podcast. I’m Desi. Si is away this week. Before we jump in and introduce our guests, if you want to look at our podcasts, you can catch it wherever you get good podcasts from or on YouTube. Or also on our ForensicFocus.com website, where there are transcripts and show notes available for everyone. But I want to welcome Paul Gullon-Scott. Did I get that right?
Paul: Yeah, you did.
Desi: Awesome, awesome. So, welcome to the podcast, mate. It’s a pleasure to have you.
Paul: I’m really grateful to be here. It’s really good to have the opportunity to actually bring mental health and digital forensics to the forefront. It’s something that has been under-researched for so many years, but has a huge impact on digital forensic investigators out there.
Desi: Yeah, and it’s definitely fallen onto, we were just talking before we started recording, but we’ve had a bit of a trend with mental health, especially in digital forensics. We’ve seen it come along quite a lot with a lot of high-profile people who have been in the industry for a while talking about it. And I was saying as well, I came from an incident response background, which is different, you deal with different stresses, but it’s definitely started to be more talked about as the industry kind of matures more. But before we jump into the research, do you want to just give the listeners a bit of background to yourself and how you’ve come to where you are now doing this?
Paul: Yeah, sure. So, I was a practitioner myself, a digital forensic investigator for about 14 years in a police force in the UK. In total, I spent 30 years within policing, as I say, 14 years as a DFI, during which most of the work that I did was around child abuse investigations. During that time, I completed two psychology degrees, one in general psych, one, sorry, the first master’s was in general psychology, the second master’s was in forensic psychology. During my studies, I approached the then unit manager and suggested to him that we start thinking about introducing a wellbeing framework into the unit. Because over the years, I’ve seen many really highly qualified, really good investigators walk out of the lab door and never return. It just got too much, and at the point it gets too much, it’s too late.
So I began researching studies which had been done and had been published, and I spent a very long time doing that. I mean, I’ve been researching the area now for about seven years. Even though I’m not practising anymore, I still actively do research in the area. And one of the things I realised was all of the studies which had been done had been done outside of the UK. So the majority had been done in America and some in Canada. But there were very, very few, and I’m talking, you know, you count them on one hand, which had actually been done in the UK.
So, I went back to the manager and I explained this and I said, “Look, there are stressors which are common across all of the studies. Why don’t we test for them using psychometrics?” so we did to establish a baseline.
So long story short, I wrote a wellbeing policy, a grading policy and a wellbeing booklet for DFIs. The booklet identified the most common stresses a DFI can experience. It also went into details of the signs and symptoms, so they were able to recognise it in themselves and others, which is, for me, equally as important, because when you do succumb to these stresses, you don’t necessarily see the signs and symptoms in yourself, because they’re cumulative, they kind of creep up on you.
So, I wrote the booklet. I wrote the grading policy, which adopted a much more proportional approach to exposure to traumatic material, namely child abuse images and videos. And because of the proportional approach that it adopted, it massively reduced the exposure to the traumatic material, but it also sped up those investigation into the CSAM jobs.
So it basically had a twofold attack, if you like. It reduced the exposure by adopting the CPS guidelines. Because here in the UK, the CPS consider a large collection of CSAM material to be either 250 category A images or a thousand images across all three categories. Now, historically what we were doing is we would categorise everything and that could easily run into the tens of thousands of images and videos. Now, you can imagine the impact that that level of exposure to those images and videos has on you as a person. We are only human. So, by adopting the CPS’s guidelines, we massively reduced exposure.
And when you take into consideration the use of CAID as well, there were quite often cases which, once they were categorised by CAID, met the threshold. So the only thing left to do after that was to go through the unconfirmed images and do a check for first-generation material. So, following that, the job’s done. You just report on it. So, it made a massive, massive reduction in the impact that DFIs were experiencing.
Desi: Right. So the CPS guidelines themselves, were they introduced out of the guidelines or they existed previously and they just weren’t being adopted?
Paul: Those guidelines existed previously. I was completely unaware of them until I started doing some research,
Desi: Right. And were the CPS guidelines meant to be adopted by kind of units like yours, or were they just for material in general when it was something that just wasn’t aligned to units that look at CPS material?
Paul: Well, the guidelines themselves were there for direction for judges, barristers the legal system, as it were. They weren’t directed at digital forensics, so we were unaware, or certainly I was unaware, that these guidelines existed. Now, when I spoke to CPS about this, they explained that once that threshold is met, all of the sentencing options are open for the judge, should the person be found guilty. So it just made even more sense. I mean, why go through tens of thousands of images when you can adopt that proportional approach?
Desi: And so I’m thinking then, when you were saying, kind of, once you’ve reached the threshold and you’re then just looking through the remainder of the pictures for first-generation material, you’re then just using hash matching to cancel out anything else or some other technology that’s out there to cancel a lot. And then you may only have say like, 10, 20, 50 images to look at rather than 10,000
Paul: So, when you’re looking for first generation material, you use a really good piece of software called Griffeye DI Pro. And within there, you can set filters. So you can filter everything else out that doesn’t have, say, EXIF data, for example. EXIF data contains things like GPS location data times, dates, camera maker model, that kind of thing. So you filter the entire contents of the images down using the EXIF data search, if you like.
So, say, for example, if I take a photograph of my iPhone, it will have the date, time, location, make and model of my iPhone. So, if you get a suspect and the suspect’s been arrested and he has an iPhone 11, you could filter all of the images and videos down to an iPhone 11, the main model of the suspect’s phone to see what pictures he’s been taking, and that can be done very quickly.
Desi: Yeah, okay. And then, so going back, because there was so much to kind of like unpick here, going back to, you were saying when you started your research, there was a lot of research in the US, or a handful, Canada on one hand, US and Canada, and reading your article, it says it’s the first of its type into this particular area of research. Did you find any differences between Canada or the US and then with your own research? Or was it just validating the commonalities between the research that had been done in other countries?
Paul: That’s a really good question, actually, because I have compared it with a study by Borg & Krohn, which is arguably the largest study of its kind in this area.
Desi: And was that with DFI? So, DFI, I don’t know whether we’ve explained the acronym for our listeners, but Digital Forensic Investigators. Did it look at DFIs or was it a different area?
Paul: It was looking at digital forensic investigators. So they had over 600 participants. It was a massive study done right across the United States. I found that when I compared my study to their study, both studies found really high levels of secondary traumatic stress among professionals exposed to CSAM material. So Borg & Crohn, and similarly, my study also found the same results.
I should explain to the listener, secondary traumatic stress is often referred to in several different ways, like vicarious trauma, secondary traumatic stress. It all now under the new DSM-5, it all now comes under post-traumatic stress. So you’ll quite often hear it being referred to as vicarious trauma, secondary traumatic stress, or post-traumatic stress, but it all now comes under post-traumatic stress.
Both studies confirmed that frequent exposure to CSAM material is absolutely a predictor of secondary traumatic stress. My study looked at how distressing someone finds looking at this material, and that revealed that for every one point increase in distress, they were seven times more likely to become susceptible to secondary traumatic stress, which was quite a striking finding, really.
Desi: Yeah, and does any of the research point into or indicate how often someone can be exposed to material like this and not raise a point into that stress area to then develop secondary stress? So, is it maybe someone has to work for six months, but then take three months off working CSAM material, or?
Paul: Yeah, there was one paper, which I read, and I think it was by Turan in 2009, and she actually did touch on the idea of tenure in the post. And there have been other papers which have considered a sort of rotational approach to digital forensics. So, you might spend a month doing CSAM jobs, you might spend the following month on drugs, you might spend the next month doing something else. But in reality, does that happen? No.
Desi: Yeah, because I think towards the end of your paper I was reading, that you didn’t find any difference between tenure or the wording.
Paul: Length of time in the job as a DFI wasn’t necessarily a predictor of secondary traumatic stress. You’re right in saying that. But the key findings from my study were 68.8% of DFIs reported experiencing secondary traumatic stress with nearly 30% reporting high to severe levels. So the impact of that is the high prevalence suggests that DFIs are at substantial risk of mental health issues, which could lead to decreased productivity, burnout, higher turnover rates. Employers might struggle to retain skilled personnel, especially those who have repeated exposure to distressing content like CSAM. And it just underlines the need for mental health screening and support systems in place to prevent this.
Desi: Did any of the research, I just want to touch on there because you said, struggle retaining staff, people leaving the job suffering this stress. Has any research, and not just your own, but any that you researched into this paper delve into secondary jobs? So if they’ve left, do people more likely to struggle to retain follow-on employment because of this stress?
Paul: That’s a very interesting question. To my knowledge, I don’t believe that research has been done. I certainly haven’t read that. But I think that will be highly dependent on counselling and the therapeutic process that individuals go through because obviously if they leave digital forensics to go to another profession, for example, if they don’t address the underlying issue, the stressors caused by the job, which could be secondary traumatic stress, it could be burnout, it could be depression and anxiety, it could be a combination of them. If they don’t address those underlying issues, then those issues will continue no matter how hard you try and mask them. And I speak from experience here.
To share with the listeners, I did break eventually. And it took 13 months of counselling, working with a fantastic counsellor, I hasten to add, to get me back to a fit state. So it can be quite a lengthy and really difficult process to take part in. So, in answer to your question, I don’t think the research has been done to look at that, but I think it would largely depend on how the DFI deals with the underlying issues.
Desi: Yeah, and I guess how much support they’re either receiving or have gone out and seeked themselves as well post suffering that stress.
Paul: Exactly, exactly.
Desi: So with the kind of research that you introduced or the booklet and the identifying factors that you’re using, how widespread is that across the UK now? Is it just limited to the unit that you were at, and a few, or is it spreading out further and further now?
Paul: Absolutely not limited to the unit that I was working in. The study that I published, absolutely shows it is across the country, DFIs across the country.
Desi: Because you were taking in participants from other units.
Paul: oYeah, I did a national study to support my paper, or to write my paper, I should say. And that national study showed that it was absolutely across the country, the reported symptoms of depression, anxiety, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress. It was all across the country.
Desi: All these symptoms and indicators that are being reported, are these all from self reporting, or are some of them from a diagnosis standpoint? So, people have been diagnosed with depression, and they’ve linked it to this, and then that’s been part of the survey or was it all just, answer these questions?
Paul: It was all based on clinically valid rating scales, so I hosted scales like the secondary traumatic stress scale, malice burnout inventory, and a few others. And they were hosted online so anyone across the country could log in and fill them in and complete them. And I realise, obviously, the clinical skills, they’re an indicator, they’re not a diagnostic tool. So, you know, for each person who reaches the cut off points of a tool such as that, there would have to be further investigation by a clinically qualified professional to see if that person was actually suffering from those signs and symptoms.
Desi: Yeah, and going back to the key findings, were there any other key findings that were in the report? And I’m also interested to know, were there any key findings that were unique to the UK?
Paul: Yeah, so going back to the key findings, the key predictors of higher secondary traumatic stress included difficulty viewing CSAM material, mental disengagement, which was a negative coping strategy employed by some DFIs. Younger age were all key predictors and the impact of those were investigators who found it emotionally difficult to handle CSAM resort to disengagement coping strategies, so trying to avoid thinking about what they were actually doing at the time, were found to be at higher risk of mental health deterioration.
Younger DFIs were also more vulnerable, likely due to the lack of experience or established COBRA mechanisms for dealing with that traumatic material. Employers could respond by offering targeted mental health support to both of those groups, promoting positive coping strategies and providing emotional resilience training for the younger, less experienced investigators by using a sort of graded exposure approach to CSAM material.
Female DFIs scored higher on the arousal subscale of the secondary traumatic stress scale. And this relates to physical and emotional distress, but statistically, and this is important, statistically, the difference between them wasn’t significant. So that suggests that male and female investigators are impacted equally and are equally at risk of succumbing to the known stresses for DFIs.
Desi: That’s interesting. Did you look at any of the statistics into, I guess, maybe the age imbalance between male and female investigators? Were there more older male investigators doing the survey versus maybe you had a younger split and the majority of the females sat in there?
Paul: I did look at the percentage of males versus females and thankfully, and it was really good to see, about a third of the participants were female. And that was really good to see because when I first started in this role, it was a very male-dominated area. So it was very nice to see. But, given a third of the participants were actually female, I think, and the results show that there’s no real difference between whether a male is more likely or a female is more likely to succumb to these stresses, it just suggests that, you know, like I said, they’re equally at risk.
The small increase that I did find in the arousal subscale might suggest that it could impact the female DFIs around their well-being and performance, especially in prolonged investigations. So, again, something that hasn’t been looked at by the research is gender-specific interventions for females and males. So, different types of counselling, for example, different stress management programs, all of which could help mitigate the effects. But again, I’m not aware of any research that’s been done around that, but it’s something, it’s an idea I’ve got.
Ineffective coping strategies, surprisingly, positive coping strategies like social support or planning didn’t significantly reduce secondary traumatic stress levels in my study, which actually is different to the Borg & Crohn study because they found social support significantly reduced levels of secondary traumatic stress.
Desi: Okay, that’s actually really interesting. Is there a difference in social support?
Paul: Well, that’s what I started to think about. I wondered whether DFIs in the UK are less likely to rely on social support outside of work to reduce the secondary traumatic stress and discuss what they do.
Desi: That was an interesting point you make because that is something that I think we covered with, it might have been Sarah Morris, actually, but about how you default into this behaviour of not discussing your work because it’s classified, or it is talking about these horrific things and people fall into that and they don’t want to take it to their family and they don’t want to take it to an outside support network, just because maybe they can’t or they just don’t feel comfortable.
Paul: Precisely. I mean, I do actually know Sarah, so it’s something that Sarah and I have actually discussed. We were discussing the likes of, so out there right now, you’ve got a specific group for men called Andy’s Man Club. And that’s a safe space for people to go out there and discuss stressors that they’re experiencing. And I turned to Sarah and I said, could you imagine a digital forensic investigator attending a safe space like that, and then offloading what they’d seen that day? Can you imagine? I mean, you run the risk of traumatising the people within the group. And I think that’s an important point to make, because again, to my knowledge, there are no similar groups like that where DFIs could go and offload.
Desi: Right, so there’s a chance that the US-based DFIs may have groups like this and this is why that could have reduced the stressor in itself.
Paul: That’s exactly what I was getting to. I’ve looked at the US sort of culture around counselling and seeking mental health support and they are a lot more open to doing that than we are here in the UK. And especially within policing. There’s a lot of research out there which has looked at police staff in general and whether they would or would not seek mental health support and the reasons around why they either would or wouldn’t. And what is abundantly clear is there is still a lot of stigma around seeking mental health support. And there is a lot of worry about if they do, how will it affect them in the future, say, for example, when they go for promotion?
Desi: Right. So they’re worried that speaking up could affect, oh, you’re not mentally tough enough, so you’re not going to handle this promotion.
Paul: Exactly that. Exactly that. And there’s a lot of research which has been done around this.
Desi: Yep. Okay. So then, from the findings of this study, or even other studies, are DFI employers on board with providing that kind of support or is there any kind of movement in that space to provide DFIs that space?
Paul: So, I am aware some forces in this country do offer the chance for group discussions if you like. So they bring the whole team together and they will discuss all the cases that they’re working on and if there’s anything particularly difficult to get the chance to gain other ideas from the peers on how to deal with it. But at the same time, it allows them to decompress almost because they’re talking about what they’re doing. But that isn’t common practice..
Desi: Depends on the unit and the work culture.
Paul: Exactly.
Desi: Okay, yeah. So that’s a very interesting big point between, I guess, your study and then the studies that you researched for the paper as well. Were there any other differences that you found in your key findings?
Paul: Yeah. So, differences, obviously we just talked about the role of social support, et cetera. There wasn’t any across in America in the Borg & Crohn Study, they didn’t find a difference at all in respect of genders. So whilst we, well, I found a sort of small difference, they didn’t find any difference whatsoever. But really they are the only places where my study and the American study differed to any great depth, you know?
Desi: It’s a very interesting concept. Did you find any studies that were, I guess non-Western cultures? Because I guess this would be a common problem in all policing around the world that everyone would face. And I wonder if there are studies done in South Korea, Japan, anywhere like that, that showed any differences.
Paul: It is. I didn’t find any. It makes you wonder whether this has actually been considered over in those countries or indeed whether they’ve got a problem, you know?
Desi: Yeah, well, I guess your point with the UK still having that stigma around seeking social help, maybe research isn’t driven because of social stigma around this kind of area, but it would seem to be a huge problem for everyone if you’re not finding a difference between genders, or a smaller, non-statistically significant difference, and that it is nationwide that it’s affecting. So you would think that it would affect all policing DFIs.
Paul: I think the biggest impact that has is on staff themselves and the longevity that they have in that post because, I’m not saying this in all cases, but in some employers. they don’t have that mental health support. Now for me, that doesn’t make sense because as an employer, you spend tens of thousands of pounds training that individual to become highly qualified and highly skilled to do that, to carry out this job. And then to not support them from a mental health perspective simply doesn’t make financial sense to me.
Desi: Yeah, not at all. And you would think that if you supported the individuals now, they then provide the foundation for your juniors to come in and have that support amongst their peers as well, which in the long run would make things significantly cheaper than constantly training the staff.
Paul: Precisely. Precisely my point. By providing the correct support, you’re increasing the resilience of the individual and prolonging the longevity of them in that role. So it just doesn’t make sense by not providing the right support for them.
Desi: Yeah, was there anything in your research, and it probably isn’t the focus, but anything that you read that provided indications for people who were less susceptible to the stresses or had other than having this wellbeing support and a way to decompress and talk about and seek counselling, but were there any indicators of individuals that just were less likely to develop STS in their role?
Paul: No. I think, you know, at the end of the day, although we’re highly qualified and highly skilled, we’re human. And I think everyone has a breaking point. Everyone has a ceiling limit that they reach where they can just not do this anymore.
Desi: Yeah, yeah. Did you come across similar research in different areas that weren’t CSAM? So things like maybe ER doctors seeing horrific crash accidents all the time or first responders getting to a scene and suffering the same kind of STI?
Paul: Really good question, actually. I’ve done a similar study on general policing in the UK. And that looked at the effects of just generally being a police officer in the UK. And I measured, again, depression, anxiety, burnout, and found similar findings in that study also up to a point where I did some analysis which showed that when a cop reaches 15 years, then the reported levels of depression, burnout, and anxiety start to reduce. And I hypothesised that, you know, at 15 years, those who stayed have developed really good or much stronger coping strategies than their younger selves.
Desi: Yeah, yeah, it’s interesting, right, I guess, because that study was done at a snapshot in time. So you’re capturing the ones that made it to 15 years versus researching them one year into the job, five years into the job, 10 years into the job, and their peers are maybe dropping off.
Paul: Yeah, exactly.
Desi: Yeah. Yeah, okay. That’s interesting then. Like, I guess it goes to show, again, we’re all human and that any kind of stressing situation can lead to this.
Paul: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, I’ve read similar research studies about social workers, for example, social workers who deal with children on a daily basis. And again, there’s similar results with them, but they also become susceptible to mental health stresses if the correct support isn’t in place. But research also suggests that the likelihood of becoming susceptible to these stresses is much higher than the general population. And that’s an important thing to take into consideration when you’re thinking about this.
Desi: Yeah, yeah. I guess it makes sense, right? Like, the general population isn’t exposed to these kind of stressors, but you would have outlying cases, I’m sure, but talking about the general population of each group, policing would have a high level of stresses imposed on them to then lead to this kind of thing.
Paul: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Desi: Yeah. It reminds me of, there have been a lot of studies into at least internally, sometimes at least, to military members and the suicide rates compared to the general population versus in the military due to different stresses. And it’s always much higher in the military for the same kind of reason. It’s just you’re exposed more to different kinds of scenarios than the general population.
Paul: It’s interesting you talk about the military because I’ve often wondered whether personnel in the military adopt a similar approach to coping with the things that they see and deal with on a daily basis. Because one of the things I found is one of the coping strategies that DFIs do use is mental disengagement, which, although gives them temporary relief from what they’re seeing and dealing with, long term, it actually promotes secondary traumatic stress, and I’ve often wondered whether military personnel use the same kind of approach.
Desi: Well, I think, from memory from the study, and I might send this out to listeners, I think it ended up being released, there are two that I kind of always think back to. One was that the stresses of the job lead to things like alcohol abuse, so trying to disengage through the use of a substance. And then the other one that was interesting, so when you’re deployed, normally there’s a full decompression process, and you’ll go through wellbeing to come back and get into society. Now, that doesn’t always work because it needs to be more, but when they introduced the initial program in the US I believe for drone pilots, because they were controlling the drones from the US, and they were leaving the job and going straight home. There was no decompression, and they found that had an increase in stresses, depression, aggression in some and it was just kind of this unregulated thing so that people were essentially in a war zone, then just leaving the building and going straight back to their homes.
I think they ended up fixing it. It was early on, but it ran for like five years and then they were like, “Oh, we’ve got all these problems” and did some research and they were like, “Oh yeah, we need to treat this like they’re being deployed.“
Paul: You really do. You really should be. That’s true.
Desi: I guess it’s the same as policing, right? Like, you kind of go to work and you’re in this completely different life. Like, you’re not going to the shops., you’re not like working your normal 9-5 job, you’re in this. criminal world where all these horrific atrocities are happening. But then you just finish your job and go home. There are probably some very similar parallels there.
Paul: There absolutely is. And again, that’s a really good point to make. Because when you’re in that world, it becomes normal and it completely changes your view of the world. I remember making a comment to my wife while I was still in the role, and I said to her, “You don’t live in the real world.” Having moved out of that role now into the role that I currently do, it wasn’t her who didn’t live in the real world, it was me. My view of the world had completely changed, but I couldn’t see that at the time.
Desi: It’s also, and this is I guess why you can’t talk to people who don’t have a concept of what you’re dealing with because I guess it is subjective for each person what the real world is. And so your wife is probably never going to relate fully to that because she’s never experienced it, but someone else is in your peer group could. Or now yourself with the younger generation coming through and doing it, you can relate, I guess, because you have experienced that and come out the other end.
Paul: Yeah, exactly. I think the experience that I went through, actually, because I did succumb to the stresses, and as I explained earlier, it took me quite a long time to get over that. But having been down that path and experienced it first-hand, it gives me a whole deeper insight into how this can be prevented and how it shouldn’t happen, you know, just how it shouldn’t happen in the first place. Because when it does get to that point, it’s too late.
Desi: Yeah. Yeah, it’s really good to see. I guess you’ve moved into a role where you can give back and start directing this into a place that can help people not reach that point that you went through just to protect those people that are doing that job.
Paul: Exactly.
Desi: Yeah. So, before we jumped on the podcast as well, you also mentioned about something that you’ve been looking into recently: the neurodiversity within, was it DFI?
Paul: Yeah, so I’ve just started to look at this and it’s becoming, for me, a really important issue to consider because there is a high proportion of neurodiverse individuals who work in digital forensics. In a recent publication, well, I see a recent publication, a publication by KPMG in 2021, a third of their participants in the study that they ran considered themselves to be neurodiverse. So, I think it’s an important point to consider, certainly in respect of the type of support that’s delivered for mental health issues, because they may not necessarily react in the same way or find, say, a particular therapy as effective as a neurotypical individual would.
And also, something I’ve recently discovered, the clinical instruments which are being sent out by support services, let’s call them, to DFIs, some of them aren’t actually validated for use in neurodiverse populations. So, that has the potential of either throwing up false positives or false negatives. So either identifying someone as meeting the clinical cutoff, for example, for PTSD, or it could also have the reverse effect of not meeting the clinical cutoff for PTSD when they actually do have it. And I find that really worrying.
Desi: Yeah, so it’s a twofold issue of not being able to diagnose or measure correctly whether someone’s suffering PTSD, and then once they do meet that threshold or they’re approaching that threshold, then the therapy is not working for them because they are neurodiverse and not going to respond through treatments that way.
Paul: Exactly that, exactly that. So for example, there are, let’s talk about CBT, cognitive behavioural therapy, for example, which has been shown to be really effective for DFIs and dealing with the stresses that they experience. I have read research which indicates that adapted CBT can be used to reduce these stresses within the neurodiverse population. But if they’re not being identified at the point of the clinical instruments, for example, if they’re not being identified at that point, then how do they get identified later on down the line to then receive the correct therapy that they need?
Desi: Yeah. So it seems almost like, and maybe it’s because the understanding of neurodiversity and how different quite a lot of us are compared to each other, is that it’s almost an individualistic approach, especially for people who are in this role, who there’s already been research showing that you’ve got quite a large portion that are going to suffer PTSD from prolonged exposure that would be worth investing in individual programs for people to diagnose that and then provide an individualistic treatment plan.
Paul: Yeah, exactly that. Exactly that. But right now, that’s not happening. And that in itself is really worrying.
Desi: Yeah. So this an area of, I guess, the next kind of research that you’re going to be doing into this neurodiversity?
Paul: Yeah, well, our plan behind the scenes, I recently joined the team with Professor Morris down at Southampton University, and we plan to do some really good, collaborative work together. And this is going to form part of that work. I feel going forward, it has to be explored and raised so people become aware of it and it then hopefully gets incorporated in the support that DFIs are provided with.
Desi: Yeah, yeah. And has the initial research shown, I’m guessing this is the first in the UK, similar to your last study? Are there other studies in the world that you’ve found that are similar?
Paul: No. All of the research that I’ve read to date, I haven’t found any of the studies which have explored neurodiversity in digital forensics and the differences it creates. So this will be a really, really groundbreaking, I suppose, piece of work that Sarah and I are going to do.
Desi: Yeah, no, that’s awesome. I’ll be looking forward to it, and I know Si will, as well. And it would be awesome to have you both back on with the research once it’s done to have a chat about it because that sounds really interesting.
Paul: Oh yeah, we’d love to come back on and discuss it when it’s done. Yeah. Yeah.
Desi: Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. So, we’re kind of at the hour now, but before we wrap up, were there any kind of final points you wanted to make in the research that you’re making or anything that you’ve noticed from any of the research that you’ve read?
Paul: I think the most important thing to take away from the talk that’s going on now just in general about mental health and digital forensics is, it’s okay not to be okay, you know? If you do some research and you read about the signs and symptoms of depression, anxiety, secondary traumatic stress, post-traumatic stress, any of those signs and symptoms resonate within you, don’t think about finding help, go and find help, speak to your GP, speak to any employee assistance program that might be out there, because this will not go away unless it’s treated by a professional trained to do that.
Desi: Is there any kind of advice around, because I guess that’s interesting, you’re saying that you did a national study and it started with your unit. Do you have any advice for DFIs that might not have those employee services offered at their unit or wherever they’re working and are potentially worried about going to talk to a general GP? Like, can you recommend any way that they could reach out and just have that initial chat with maybe finding someone who is trained to work with DFIs?
Paul: My recommendation initially would be if your employer doesn’t supply that kind of support or that level of support, my advice would always be, please go and talk to your GP. You have no idea how resourceful those guys are.
Certainly, I know, in my area, we’re incredibly lucky. I know it differs massively, but we’re incredibly lucky. I went to speak to my GP and within two weeks was on a talking therapy program. And that’s incredibly quick. I know it’s a bit of a postcode lottery. But my advice, please, please, if you are experiencing any of these stresses, please reach out to your GP in the first instance. They are a wealth of knowledge and resources.
Desi: Yeah, yeah, definitely. In echoing that, definitely don’t don’t do it alone. Don’t just try and push through it. Reach out and get some support.
Paul: Absolutely.
Desi: Yeah. Well, Paul, it’s been a pleasure having you on, talking about mental health and neurodiversity, DFIs, it’s always a very interesting topic and affects everyone that’s in this field. So, thanks so much for coming on and sharing with me.
Paul: Thank you for the opportunity. Thanks for allowing me to come on and share my views and experiences.
Desi: Yeah, no worries. And I’m really looking forward to having you on again once you get through the next lot of research to talk about that, as well. Because that’ll be even more interesting, I’m sure, building on what you’ve already done.
Paul: Yeah, absolutely.
Desi: Well, thank you to all of our listeners. We’ll put as much as we can in the show notes. The transcript will be there, you can get that from forensicfocus.com or on YouTube as well, or wherever you get your podcasts, but thanks everyone, and I’ll catch you all next time.
