The over-representation of poor mental health within policing: a critical realist approach

Brain, Mark 2025. The over-representation of poor mental health within policing: a critical realist approach. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

Mind’s (2015) The Blue Light Scoping Survey identified that 91% of police personnel in England reported experiencing low mood, stress and poor mental health. This was considered the highest level among all the emergency services (Mind 2015). To examine this overrepresentation of cognitive suffering, this case study draws on eighty-six unstructured narrative interviews conducted with retired and serving police officers of all ranks. From this number, seventy officers had worked or were currently serving for Sandford Police, an anonymous constabulary situated in England and Wales, and sixteen participants were from other constabularies. Using Layder’s (1998) Adaptive Theory, the case study modifies two propositions to propose the core argument of the thesis, specifically, what primarily affects participants' mental health is not the traumatic operational incidents that police officers witness, but the harmful chronic organisational relations that affect police officers’ sense of inner security. The thesis identifies four themes of potential mental injury: organisational control, being internally investigated, institutional masculinity, and the stress arising from disconnecting and being disconnected from the job. This challenges the dominant framing of mental ill-health as a problem of individual cognition, arguing instead that cognitive suffering arises out of the harmful organisational relations that police officers must inhabit and negotiate. As such, the thesis argues that the institutional structures and cultures of policing ought to be the principal focus of further research into the overrepresentation of poor mental health amongst police officers of all ranks.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Schools > Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	2 April 2026
Last Modified:	02 Apr 2026 09:48
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/186007

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