Security officers and PTSD

Nov. 4, 2020
How organizations can help guards deal with a traumatic aftermath

Consider the possible horrible events a security officer may come across during his or her shift: an employee struck and injured or killed by a car in the company parking lot; an employee who has a fatal heart attack or stroke at his or her desk or work station; a child who drowns in a hotel swimming pool; a jewelry store clerk shot during a robbery; an elderly shopper who dies at the mall; a construction employee who is severely injured on a job site. The only thing worse than arriving on the scene of one of these traumatic events is witnessing the event as it happens.

Security officers have witnessed church and synagogue shootings, mass attacks at shopping centers, movie theaters, and casinos, and they may see various forms of sudden deaths or workplace violence on a regular basis if they work at the emergency room at a hospital.

If you provide armed officers for client locations, it’s probably because the threat of a robbery is constant. What response plans to do you have in place to help your security officers cope with not just the legal issues related to a self-defense shooting, but the mental health issues as well?

Since we don’t employ robots out in the field we know that human beings will react with normal emotions when involved – as a witness or a participant – in an abnormal event. It’s not normal to see people die by violence as part of your job. Even firefighters, police officers, doctors, nurses, and paramedics – who have been trained to “deal with it” – have difficulty coping with these events, especially if they occur regularly and over a long span of time. The human mind can only take so much and different traumatic events will affect different people in different ways.

Consider the concentric circles of victimization that occur if one of your armed officers was forced to shoot an armed robber in a retail store. This event certainly affects the officer forced to fire; his or her family, whose lives have now been changed; the employees in the store; their families, who worry even more now about the safety of their loved ones; the store owners, operators, or franchisees; any vendors in the store; and any customers in the store. That’s a lot of people affected by a single traumatic event.

Do you have a legal obligation to provide counseling services in the aftermath? No, but you certainly have an ethical and moral obligation to at the least provide therapeutic alternatives for your employees, even if they choose not to use them. Your worker’s compensation insurance carrier will appreciate your efforts to lessen the likelihood of a stress disability claim. It’s the right thing to do, to lessen the possibility your employee quits, suffers from continuing and worsening symptoms, and may lessen the possibility of that person’s suicide. Each year, more police officers kill themselves than are killed in the line of duty. That is a fact, despite their ability to get help from their Employee Assistance Program (EAP) provider, police psychologists, and Peer Support Team members. One of the lead paramedics who responded to the Columbine High School shootings killed himself. Our military and VA face the problem of suicides daily. Trauma hurts from the outside in and the inside out. It causes invisible wounds in even the toughest among us.

So, what are your options? How can you support your security officers who are exposed to trauma? The first step is to acknowledge the possibility that it could happen to one of your employees and you must have a pre-established protocol in place if it ever does. This could include contacting a local mental health clinician in your area, to discuss how he or she could provide immediate crisis counseling services to one or more employees directly following a serious incident. You may require the use of a team of trauma-trained clinicians if several of your security officers were exposed to the same event. They can benefit from not only individual sessions, but a group debrief, that takes place a few days after the incident. (People need time to process what they saw or heard. Giving them a few days to collect themselves can make the group debriefing session much more effective.)

The provider you choose should be able to access other resources that could be useful, like having male and female therapists available, ones who may speak the most common languages in your community, and who have years of experience helping people deal with the aftermath of violence; not all of them have this background or depth of services.

This should include clinicians who have specific training in not just Cognitive Behavioral Therapy CBT (or “talk therapy”) but also Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), a proven technique for trauma relief. (EMDR worked for me and my collected small and large traumas after 15 years in law enforcement.)

If you have in-house security officers, see if you can get them enrolled in your company’s EAP program – if they aren’t already eligible. Most EAP providers will offer three to five sessions to the employee for free – as part of the company’s overall medical benefits package – and then any subsequent sessions are given on a low-cost, ability-to-pay basis.

Some security officers may choose their own resources, which could include getting a referral to a mental health provider from their family doctor or primary care physician; a referral from a trusted family member or friend who can vouch for the value of mental health help; or from their church pastor, if he or she is trained in counseling services. You can suggest these alternatives to your employees in a specific staff meeting or training on this issue.

The biggest hurdle you may face with trying to get your security officers to use mental health services probably won’t be the length or depth of your resource list; there are many trained, empathic people ready to help them and you. The challenge is to get them to go. You can’t force employees to go to therapy, EAP, or even sit in a peer-supported debrief session. You can make the help available to them and explain the benefits as patiently, empathically, and supportively as possible.

A lot of men feel the stigma of “reaching out to a shrink” and won’t go – even when they are hurting and it’s affecting their personal and professional lives. It’s often because they don’t want to look weak, unmanly, or somehow be labeled as “crazy” for having the same sleep disorders, nightmares, eating and digestive problems, intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, sadness, survivor’s guilt, anger, and triggering moments as every other person who has been through a similar startling, life-alerting event. People who have been through a traumatic event think their feelings, emotion, and “abnormal thoughts” are unique to them, when in reality, they are shared by all of us who have experienced something involving death, severe injury, murder, and violence.

You may be able to reduce the stigma about getting therapeutic help by explaining how the process is confidential, there is no report that goes back to you or the employer, and that this is a trusted approach that has worked for thousands of people, including those who have experienced events like 9/11 and the Las Vegas concert shooting firsthand.

As an owner, leader, or site manager of a group of security officers, you have a duty of care for their physical and mental well-being. It’s more than just an OSHA duty; it’s a human one as well. Put together your mental health resource list today and tell your employees about these services.

About the Author:

Dr. Steve Albrecht specializes in workplace violence prevention, site security surveys, employee coaching, training, and threat assessments. He has written 23 books on business, security, firearms, and criminal justice topics. He can be reached at www.DrSteveAlbrecht.com.