An Investigation of Mental Health and Personality in Swedish Police Trainees upon Entry to the Police Academy

J Police Crim Psych DOI 10.1007/s11896-009-9053-z An Investigation of Mental Health and Personality in Swedish Police Trainees upon Entry to the Police Academy Mehdi Ghazinour & Larserik E. Lauritz & Elizabeth Du Preez & Nafisa Cassimjee & Jörg Richter # Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2009 Abstract This study aimed at personality and mental health status of Swedish police trainees considering gender differences; and at relationships between personality and mental health. 103 individuals were investigated by means of the SCL-90-R and the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) upon entry to the police academy. By contrast, the police trainees were mentally much healthier than individuals from the general population. They reported low Harm Avoidance and their character dimensions were more developed in terms of strength, responsibility and reliability. Harm Avoidance (positively) and Self-Directedness (negatively) were found to be associated with all facets of psychopathology. The good mental health and mature personality characteristics reported by trainees, particularly the females, suggest that they have the strength to master the stressful situations which they will face in their professional lives. In order to prevent possible psychological disturbances later in life, due to the high level of distress in their work, the development of trainees’ personality in terms of particular M. Ghazinour Department of Social Work, University of Umeå, Umeå, Sweden L. E. Lauritz Police Academy, University of Umeå, Umeå, Sweden E. Du Preez : N. Cassimjee Department of Psychology, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa J. Richter (*) Centre for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Eastern and Southern Norway, Postboks 4623, Nydalen 0405 Oslo, Norway e-mail: jrichterj@web.de coping skills should be regarded as an integral part of their professional training at the police academy. Keywords Mental health . Temperament and character inventory . Swedish police trainees Introduction The nature of police work from a personality perspective implies working in a variety of situations which demand a high capacity for stress tolerance (Aaron 2000). For example, police work includes offering protection to crime victims, but at the same time fighting the most terrible crimes; maintaining close and open public relations and discipline; it requires the provision of security and the operation of security facilities, material supplies and equipment. Police work is characterised as a demanding and stressful job (Aaron 2000). The effect of stress and the work environment on police officers has long been a topic of interest for researchers and many investigations related to mental health have confirmed that police officers are a risk group for increased psychosocial stress causing depersonalization, post traumatic stress syndrome, suicide and feelings of insufficient personal accomplishments (Backman et al. 1997; McCafferty et al. 1990; Berg et al. 2006; Ward et al. 2006). Individuals, who have served as police officers for many years have reported feelings of exhaustion and hopelessness (Backman et al. 1997) as well as excessive alcohol consumption (Richmond et al. 1998). Even though several investigations have focused on mental health or burnout in relation to stress, work environment or demanding crime situations, less attention has been given to the possible J Police Crim Psych relationship between temperament, character and psychopathological symptoms in police trainees. The investigation of police officers’ life and working conditions provides an opportunity to reflect on personality changes from police training to their work in the field as police officers. Focusing on police trainees’ personality development during training may shed light on personality characteristics which possibly predispose individuals to mental vulnerability in their working lifes. Sweden is one of those countries that has started to develop research on the police. Three places (Stockholm, Umeå, and Vaxsjö) offer a 2 year basic police training program for police officers with police trainees having to complete various activities, including practical sessions with senior police officers. Zamore de Alencar et al. (1981) reported that Swedish police trainees often experience an attitude change relating to their future work and assigned duties when they encounter reality during their practical sessions. At that point more experienced colleagues with several years experience of often very grim situations work with the trainees. Many of these senior police officers have had only limited opportunities to systematically work through psychological traumas. As a consequence, many of them have developed emotional strategies for coping which function on the surface, but consume a lot of psychological and physical energy (Backman et al. 1997). Swedish police trainees were found to achieve increasing ‘responsibility’, ‘flexibility’, ‘empathy’ and ‘humor’ during their training at the police academy (Lilie and Rosmark 2002). Furthermore, Lilie and Rosmark (2003) reported various reasons for not completing the police training course were reported, including for example the school environment, family reasons, and aspects of police work itself. The above mentioned Swedish investigations neither can identify the role of personality characteristics as possible antecedents for developing psychopathological symptoms in the course of daily police duties later in life nor the way in which police trainees’ personality characteristics develop during their 2 years’ training. There has been no investigation of police trainees’ personality in terms of temperament and character even though these dimensions represent basic determinants of coping with stress. The theoretical approach of the present investigation refers to Cloninger’s (Cloninger et al. 1994) psychobiological model of personality, focusing on relationships between personality characteristics and mental health in police trainees. Cloninger’s psychobiological theory postulates four temperament dimensions and three character dimensions. Harm avoidance, novelty seeking, reward dependence and persistence are the temperament dimensions that regulate automatic emotional reactions and habits (Cloninger et al. 1994). The three character dimensions self-directedness, cooperativeness and self-transcendent include both a cognitive perspective about self/non-self boundaries and an emotional perspective (Cloninger et al. 1994). According to Cloninger, character development implies changes in the propositional memory system; whereas temperament implies individual differences in procedural memory (Cloninger et al. 1993). In the current research project the focus was on associations between temperament, character and mental health status in Swedish police trainees upon commencement of training, considering the following questions: (a) How can the personality and mental health status of Swedish police trainees be evaluated in comparison with the general population? (b) Are there gender differences in personality characteristics and mental health in police trainees? (c) Are there general relationships between particular personality characteristics and mental health dimensions? (d) If so, are there additional particular relationships depending on the type of psychopathological symptoms? This is the first scientific report of a longitudinal research program on Swedish police officers’ personality development from police trainees to officers. Methods Sample One hundred three police trainees from one of the three Swedish police academies participated in the research project within the first 2 weeks after intake. There were substantially more male (n= 68) than female (n =35) subjects in the sample with males being older than females (Table 1). Most of the participants were single and had already gained some other university education prior to starting police training. The trainees received information about the aims of the investigation and gave their written consent before the start of the investigation. Participation was voluntary. Participants were asked to complete a socio-demographic form and the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI), the Symptom Checklist (SCL-90-R), the Ways of Coping Checklist (WoC) and the State Trait Anger Expression Inventory (STAXI-II). However, only the TCI and the SCL90-R were utilised in the current analysis. The completion of the four questionnaires took about 1 h and the assessment was performed in the police academy’s rooms. Socio-demographic Form A socio-demographic form was developed by the first and second authors for this investigation, asking among other things for information about age, gender, earlier education and marital status. Moreover, respondents were asked whether they J Police Crim Psych Table 1 Characteristics of the sample by gender Males Females N 68 35 Age x ± SD years 25.79±3.98 23.94±3.98 Range in years 21–38 20–38 Marital status in % Single 45 51 Married 34 20 Co-habitant 19 26 Divorced (no relationships) 2 0 Widowed 0 3 Highest educational level before entering police academy in % Technical school 6 6 Secondary school 34 40 Adult education classes 5 3 University 55 51 ever had suicidal thoughts (yes or no) and about their alcohol drinking habits (never, seldom, sometimes or often). TCI Temperament and Character Inventory The Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) was used to assess personality characteristics according to Cloninger’s theory. It is a 238 item true/false self-administered questionnaire measuring four largely genetically determined and independently inherited temperament dimensions: (a) Novelty Seeking, a tendency toward exhilaration in response to novel stimuli or cues (four subscales: exploratory excitability versus stoic rigidity (NS1), impulsivity versus reflection (NS2), extravagance versus reserve (NS3), and disorderliness versus regimentation (NS4)); (b) harm avoidance, a heritable bias in the inhibition or cessation of behaviour (four subscales: anticipatory worry and pessimism versus uninhibited optimism (HA1), fear of uncertainty (HA2), shyness with strangers (HA3), and fatigability versus vigour (HA4)); (c) reward dependence, the tendency to maintain or pursue ongoing behaviours (three subscales: sentimentality (RD1), attachment versus detachment (RD3), and dependence versus independence (RD4)); and (d) persistence, a tendency of perseverance in behaviour despite frustration and fatigue. The TCI also measures three character dimensions, predominantly determined by socialisation processes during the lifespan: (a) Self-Directedness, the extent to which a person identifies the self as an autonomous individual (five subscales: responsibility versus blaming (SD1), pur- Total t/X2 p T=2.23 0.030 χ2=4.68 0.320 χ2=0.422 0.940 103 posefulness versus lack of goal direction (SD2), resourcefulness versus inertia (SD3), self-acceptance versus self-striving (SD4), and congruent second nature versus bad habits (Sd5)); (b) Cooperativeness, the extent to which a person identifies himself or herself as an integral part of the society as a whole (five subscales: acceptance versus social Intolerance (CO1), empathy versus social disinterest (CO2), helpfulness versus unhelpfulness (CO3), compassion versus revengefulness (CO4), and integrated conscience versus self-serving advantage (CO5)); and (c) self-transcendence, the intensity of identification with unity of all things (three subscales: creative selfforgetfulness versus self-consciousness (ST1), transpersonal identification (ST2), and spiritual acceptance versus rational materialism (ST3) (Cloninger et al. 1993). The inventory has been translated into various languages and its psychometric properties have been established in several countries, for example, the USA, Sweden, Japan, France, Dutch, Korea, and Australia (Cloninger et al. 1994; Brändström et al. 2008; Kijima et al. 2000; Pélissolo and Lépine 2000; Duijsens et al. 2000; Sung et al. 2002; Parker et al. 2003). The Swedish general population data that was compared with the study data was obtained from Brändström et al. (2008). This random sample constituted the basis of the previous standardisation of the Swedish version of the TCI; consisting of 1,367 individuals aged 19 or over. It was recruited by the county population register. SCL-90-R The SCL-90-R is a 90-item self-report inventory developed by Derogatis and Cleary (1977), Derogatis (1994) for the assessment of psychological problems and psychopatho- J Police Crim Psych logic symptoms. Each of the 90 items is rated on a 5-point scale of distress (between 0—“not at all” and 4—“extremely”). Subsequently, the answers are categorised into nine primary symptom dimensions: somatisation, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, interpersonal sensitivity, anger-hostility, depression, anxiety, paranoid ideation, phobic anxiety, and psychoticism. In addition, three global indices provide a measure of overall psychological distress: the Global Severity Index (GSI), Positive Symptom Index (PST) and the Positive Symptom Distress Index (PSDI; Schmitz et al. 2000). Cronbach’s Alpha of the GSI was reported to be 0.97. Its sensitivity was reported to vary between 0.59 and 0.88 depending upon the various sub-scores (Schmitz et al. 2000; Ghazinour et al. 2003). The Swedish general population data for comparison with the trainee’s results was obtained from the Swedish standardisation of the SCL-90-R (random sample of 3,018 individuals—Fridell et al. 2002). Use of the Swedish general population data for comparison purposes is justified as police trainees represent one professional group within the general population. Results There were no gender differences related to marital status or the level of previous education before entering the police academy (Table 1). Male and female police trainees differed neither in the occurrence of suicidal thoughts in their biography nor in their current alcohol drinking habits. However, 17.6% of the females and 9.1% of the males reported experiencing suicidal thoughts at least once in their life and about 6% of the males versus 3% of the female trainees reported drinking alcohol often. Compared to the individuals from the Swedish general population of the same average age, male police trainees scored lower in Harm Avoidance (t=4.20; p<.0001) and higher in the three character dimensions (SD: t=3.77; p=.0002; CO: t=2.40; p=.018; ST: t=2.74; p=.007), whereas by comparison, female trainees reported lower Harm Avoidance scores (t=2.94; p=.005), higher Reward Dependence (t=4.12; p=.0001) and higher Self-Directedness (t=2.52; p=.015) and Cooperativeness (t=4.6; p<.0001). Even though the police trainees, on average, did not differ from Swedish individuals of the same age from the general population in reported average severity of any mental distress symptom (PSDI), they reported significantly fewer psychopathological symptoms or psychological problems in almost all primary symptom areas (with differences in males between t=2.21; p=.029 for phobic-anxiety and t=7.55; p<.0001 for hostility—except for somatisation; in females between t=2.76; p=.009 for interpersonal sensitivity and t=10.00; p<.0001 for hostility—with the exception of obsessive compulsion). This is reflected by the significantly lower PST score, the sum of the scores of the reported symptoms, both for males (t=3.46; p<.0001) and females (t=5.40; p<.0001). The mostly higher t-scores for the female subsample compared to the male subsample reflect a tendency of female trainees to report fewer psychological problems or psychopathological symptoms in comparison with their general population counterparts than the male trainees. Although, we could not find any gender difference related to psychopathological symptom scores, female trainees reported substantially higher Reward Dependence and Self-Transcendence compared to the males (Table 2) mainly based on differences on the Reward Dependence subscale “Sentimentality (RD1)” (t=2.88; p=.005) and “Attachment versus Detachment (RD3)” (t=2.35; p=.021) as well as on “Spiritual Acceptance versus Rational Materialism (ST3)” (t=3.04; p=.003). Furthermore, females scored higher on the Cooperativeness subscale “Empathy versus Social Disinterest (CO2)” (t=2.88; p=.005) and on the Novelty Seeking subscale “Extravagance versus Reserve (NS3)” (t=2.92; p=.005) and lower on “Disorderliness versus Regimentation (NS4)” (2.78; p=.006); and there was a tendency to higher “Persistence” in female than in male trainees (t=1.91; p=.059). In a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOA) with gender and the occurrence of any suicidal thoughts in the past as fixed factors and the 25 TCI personality subscales and the nine SCL-90-R psychopathological symptom scores as dependent variables, main effects for both fixed factors could be found to be based mainly on the impact of gender upon RD3, ST3, NS4, CO2, NS3, RD1, NS1, and PS and the occurrence of suicidal thoughts upon RD3, psychotic symptoms, SD2, HA1, SD5, HA3, obsessivecompulsive symptoms, depression, and interpersonal sensitivity (each with decreasing effect) (Table 3). Only “Dependence versus Independence (RD4)” (r=−.29; p=.003) and PST (r=−.24; p=.015) were found substantially negatively correlated with age in our sample. In relation to previous education level, post-hoc comparisons in 1-way ANOVAs (Tuckey Test) showed that those who attended adult education classes reported lower scores on “Social Acceptance versus Social Intolerance (CO1)” and higher scores on “Hostility” and “Paranoid Ideation” then those with other forms of previous education. Marital status was not found to relate significantly to any of the personality or psychopathological scores. However, trainees who reported suicidal thoughts in the past showed higher scores on “Shyness with strangers (HA3)” (t=6.75; p=.011); Harm Avoidance dimension (t=5.78; p=.018) and “Attachment versus Detachment (RD3)” (t=13.51; p<.001) as well as lower scores on “Purposefulness versus Lack of goal direction (SD2)” (t= J Police Crim Psych Table 2 Means and standard deviations of the personality dimensions (TCI) and psychopathological (SCL-90-R) scores by gender (df=101 for each) Males Females Novelty seeking (NS) Harm avoidance (HA) Reward dependence Persistence (PS) Self-directedness (SD) Cooperativeness (CO) Self-transcendence (ST) General symptom index (GSI) Somatization Obsessive compulsive Interpersonal sensitivity Depression Anxiety Hostility Phobic-anxiety 21.44±4.50 9.71±5.31 15.82±2.50 4.60±1.98 35.42±5.35 35.56±3.75 9.66±4.72 0.33±0,32 0.29±0.35 0,65±0,53 0.31±0.44 0.50±0.56 0.36±0.39 0.09±0.15 0.06±0.13 22.00±4.37 10.38±4.56 17.80±2.47 5.38±1.88 34,97±5.37 36.88±2.81 12,50±4.53 0.33±0.24 0.27±0.21 0.58±0.56 0.40±0.52 0.56±0.43 0.39±0.32 0.07±0.16 0.08±0.14 0.58 0.63 3.77 1.94 −0.40 1.82 2.90 0.02 −0.27 −0.63 0.99 0.58 0.38 −0.64 0.83 0.552 0.527 < 0.001 0.059 0.686 0.072 0.005 0.983 0.792 0.533 0.324 0.560 0.707 0.522 0.407 Paranoid Psychoticism PST PSDI 0.20±0.28 0.16±0.27 19.09±14.93 1.41±0.43 0.17±0.32 0.16±0.21 19.89±11.79 1.42±0.36 −0.60 0.01 0.27 0.13 0.550 0.996 0.785 0.899 14.39; p<.001), “Congruent second nature versus bad habits (SD5)” (t=7.75; p=.006) and Self-Directedness dimension (t=5.59; p=.020). Furthermore, they received a higher GSI (t=6.32; p=.014) and reported more severe obsessive-compulsive symptoms (t=5.60; p=.020), more interpersonal sensitivity (t=5.57; p=.018) and more psychotic symptoms (t=16.04; p<.001) in the SCL-90-R than those without suicidal thoughts. The level of alcohol consumption was found to be related to “Disorderliness versus Regimentation (NS4)” (χ2=3.18; p=.028), “Anticipatory worry versus inhibited optimism (HA1)” (χ2=3.18; p=.022) and “Empathy versus Social Disinterest (CO2)” (χ2=3.36; p=.022). The more disorderly and worried and the less empathic the subjects were, the more often they drank alcohol. Self-Directedness correlated significantly with all psychopathological scores of the SCL-90-R mostly with a moderate effect size, as did Harm Avoidance except in relation to hostility with the more self-directed and the less harm avoiding the trainees were, the fewer their psychoTable 3 MANOVA results with personality (TCI) scores and psychopathological (SCL-90-R) scores as dependent variables, gender and own suicide thoughts as fixed factors each with power=1.0 Effects Gender Own suicide thoughts Pillai’s trace 0.55 0.64 F df p η2 2.19 3.25 34/62 34/62 0.004 <0.001 0.54 0.64 t P pathological disturbances (Table 4). Furthermore, Cooperativeness was found substantially negatively correlated with hostility, paranoid ideation and psychotic symptoms, whereas Self-Transcendence was associated with the GSI, somatisation, anxiety and phobic anxiety symptoms. Additionally, significant correlations were found on the subscale level that were not of substantial impact upon the relationships on the dimensional level: “Exploratory Excitability versus Stoic Rigidity (NS1)” was negatively related to the GSI and PSDI, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, depression, anxiety and phobic anxiety symptoms. “Sentimentality (RD1)” was positively related to the GSI, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, psychotic, anxiety and phobic anxiety symptoms. “Social Acceptance versus Social Intolerance (CO1)” was negatively associated with hostility and paranoid ideation; and “Creative SelfForgetfulness versus Self-Consciousness (ST1)” correlated positively with the GSI and somatisation. In multiple regression analyses with the SCL-90-R psychopathological scores as dependent variables and the personality dimensions of the TCI as independent variables, the variance of the personality scores could explain a significant amount of the variance of each of the psychopathological scores with varying personality dimensions with the highest determination coefficients in the regression equation (GSI: negative SD; somatisation: HA; obsessivecompulsive symptoms: negative NS + negative SD, interpersonal sensitivity: HA, depression: negative SD + HA, anxiety: HA + negative SD, hostility: negative CO, phobic anxiety: HA, paranoid ideation: negative CO, psychotic PSDI −.06 .28** −.05 .05 −.40*** −.16 .17 −.10 .51*** .09 −.12 −.55*** −.18 .25* Discussion −.16 .54*** .03 −.03 −.50** −.10 .22* .01 .17 −.13 −.01 −.26** −.32*** −.01 .07 .38*** .17 −.06 −.27** −.07 .26** −.16 .28** .05 −.01 −.33*** −.25* .16 −.16 .38*** .20 −.01 −.43*** −.21* .23 The general aim of the present study was to investigate Swedish police trainees’ personality, mental health status and the relationship between the two. In relation to research question (a) our results indicate that on average the investigated Swedish police trainees upon entry to the police academy were mentally much healthier than individuals from the general population. Furthermore, they were characterised by a more relaxed and optimistic attitude, more advanced boldness and confidence, more intensively outgoing and vigorous behaviour (characteristic descriptions of individuals with low harm avoidance) than the average Swede of similar age and the same gender. The police trainees’ character dimensions were particularly more developed in terms of strength; responsibility and reliability: purposefulness: resourcefulness and efficacy: self-acceptance (highly self-directed): social tolerance and empathy: helpfulness and compassion: and high ethical standards and principles in social relationships (highly cooperative). Additionally the female police trainees evaluated themselves as more sentimental and emotionally warm, more intensively dedicated and attached and dependent upon others (highly reward dependent) compared to Swedish females from the normal population. Our results confirm findings of Carpenter and Gaza (1987), Hogan and Kurties (1975) and of Hargrave and Hiatt (1989) by means of other instruments (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory—MMPI; California Personality Inventory—CPI), who found police applicants reporting lower depression and anxiety scores; showing Table 5 Multiple regressions on psychopathological scores (SCL-90R) (df 7/95 for each) Adjusted r2 *p<0.050; **p<0.010; ***p<0.001 −.15 .40*** .10 .06 −.38** −.12 .12 −.14 .46*** .01 −.17 −.54*** −0.15 .14 −.07 .43*** −.02 −.04 −.30** −.10 .25* Novelty seeking (NS) Harm avoidance (HA) Reward dependence Persistence (PS) Self-directedness (SD) Cooperativeness (CO) Self-transcendence (ST) −.13 .52*** .04 −0.05 −.56*** −.17 .23* −.07 .46*** .09 −.06 −.56** −.15 .19* Host Anx Dep Int.S Obs.C Soma GSI Table 4 Pearson correlations between psychopathological (SCL-90-R) factors and personality dimensions (TCI) scores Phob Para Psych symptoms: negative SD + ST, PST: negative SD, HA + ST and PSDI: negative SD) (Table 5). PST J Police Crim Psych General symptom index (GSI) Somatization Obsessive compulsive Interpersonal sensitivity Depression Anxiety Hostility Phobic-anxiety Paranoid Psychoticism PST PSDI 0.38 0.17 0.33 0.19 0.33 0.36 0.07 0.16 0.14 0.23 0.38 0.14 F p 9.92 4.08 8.01 4.49 8.25 9.19 2.15 3.86 3.41 5.32 9.82 3.28 <0.001 <0.001 <0.001 <0.001 <0.001 <0.001 0.045 <0.001 0.003 <0.001 <0.001 0.004 J Police Crim Psych more interests in developing and maintaining social relationships, reporting higher assertiveness and dominance, more potential for social mobility, more social poise and selfconfidence, higher self-acceptance, a greater need for autonomous achievement, more functional efficiency, more psychological mindedness, more masculine attitudes, and higher empathy in comparison with unsuccessful applicants. Gender differences occurred only in relation to personality characteristics and rather than mental ill health (question b). Unlike common findings from general population studies where women are reported to have, on average, more psychopathological symptoms than men, the Swedish female police trainees reported a similar good mental health compared to their male counterparts. The finding of higher Reward Dependence, Cooperativeness and Self-Transcendence as well as lower Novelty Seeking (NS3 & NS4) of females compared to males seems to reflect the common situation within the Swedish population and confirms findings from the standardization study of the Swedish version of the TCI (Brändström et al. 2008). Swedish females generally described themselves as more sympathetic, sentimental and understanding; as more empathetic, compassionate and supportive; as well as more unpretentious, selfless, and spiritual than males. On the one hand, these descriptions may reflect genetically determined influences for Harm Avoidance and Reward Dependence; on the other hand they may be the result of rearing influences directing female and male behavioural stereotypes and the interaction of these factors during life-span. However, we did not find that women evaluate themselves as more careful, fearful, insecure, and negativistic (characteristics of highly harm avoidant individuals) than men, as reported in relation to the normal population (Brändström et al. 2001). Indeed we found a reverse tendency in favour of female trainees for Persistence whilst on average within the Swedish general population men scored higher than women, implying that the female trainees should be characterised as more industrious and diligent, more hard-working, ambitious and overachieving, and more perseverant and perfectionistic than their male counterparts (Cloninger et al. 1994). Corresponding findings from female police officers were reported by Richmond et al. (1998) concerning aspects of life style (drinking and smoking habits etc.). They concluded that women in the police force might feel under pressure to behave like their male colleagues in order to survive and to establish themselves in the male dominated world of police work. Our found gender particularities concerning Harm Avoidance and Persistence compared to the normal population may reflect some kind of selfselection bias in the sense that only those women who have such personality characteristics elect a police career. The variance of the personality characteristics assessed by means of the TCI could explain a significant amount of the variation in all the psychopathological scores of the SCL-90-R; and Harm Avoidance and Self-Directedness (negatively) was found to be associated with all facets of psychopathology covered by the SCL-90-R (see question c). Similar relationships have been consistently reported in the international literature by means of the TCI especially for depressive disorders in samples from the general population and in clinical samples (for example, Richter et al. 2000; Cloninger et al. 1998; Peirson and Heuchert 2001). In particular, Harm Avoidance has been found to be higher in individuals suffering from various kinds of psychopathology compared with healthy subjects (for example: panic disorder—Mula et al. 2008; bipolar spectrum disease—Savitz et al. 2008; pain—Conrad et al. 2007; relatives of schizophrenia patients—Bora and Veznedaroglu 2007). This suggests that high Harm Avoidance, especially when combined with low Self-Directedness, represents an unspecific vulnerable precondition to developing some psychopathological disturbance when confronted with serious and demanding critical life events or daily hassles, the occurrence of which is almost guaranteed due to the nature of police work. Mearns and Mauch (1998) reported a buffering effect of highly generalized expectancies for negative mood regulation (a belief that, when one is in bad mood, one can do something to make oneself feeling better) upon the close relationship between job stress and physical and psychological disturbances in police officers. Hodgins et al. (2001) found agreeableness and conscientiousness to substantial predict general mental health but not neuroticism (measured by means of the NEO-FFI and GHQ-28). Introversion (corresponding to high Harm Avoidance combined with low Self-Directedness) combined with difficulties in expressing feelings and emotional exhaustion (high Harm Avoidance) was reported to predict post-traumatic stress symptoms in traumatised police officers (measured by means of the Maudsley Personality Inventory) (Carlier et al. 1997). Both a highly generalised expectancy for negative mood regulation on the one hand, and high conscientiousness combined with low introversion on the other, can be regarded as expressions of generally high Self-Directedness, in particular of high purposefulness, responsibility, and resourcefulness, suggesting similarity between our findings and the international findings. Furthermore, low Cooperativeness implying social intolerance, criticism, unhelpfulness, revengefulness and destruction and opportunistic behavioural tendencies are particularly associated with symptoms of hostility, paranoia and with psychotic symptoms. High Self-Transcendence reflecting patience, self-forgetfulness and high imaginative tendencies were found to particularly correlate with symptoms of somatisation, anxiety and with psychotic symptoms (see question d). These results seem to suggest that low cooperative individuals might feel and express hostility and may be rather self-centred with consequently paranoid ideations. J Police Crim Psych When those attitudes, emotional reactions and behavioural tendencies of low Cooperativeness occur combined with too much patience, too much self-forgetfulness and high imaginative tendencies this may cause psychotic symptoms or somatisation as a consequence of inadequate coping with, or separation from, the perceived social conflicts and emotional tension. These findings partly correspond to the prediction of general health by agreeableness (Hodgins et al. 2001) which is conceptually close to the Cooperativeness dimension of the TCI. The interpretation of the findings is limited by the relatively small and self-selected group of police trainees. It can be assumed that only the most mature and healthy individuals accepted the responsibility for contributing to the increase in knowledge about the relationship between personality and mental health in police trainees by voluntarily participating in the investigation and therefore that the average expression of personality traits and the mental health conditions of the Swedish police trainees is somewhat less positive; this is partly suggested by the very low percentage of individuals in the sample who reported drinking alcohol often. Nevertheless, our study provides some substantial insights into Swedish police trainees’ personality and mental health based on Cloninger’s biosocial model of personality. The similarities of associations found in personality traits and psychopathological symptoms between our study and internationally reported findings support the validity of our results. It should be noted that our findings are not biased by subject motivations to present themselves in a positive light as the study was clearly independent of any pre-screening procedures performed prior to intake, the police academy’s intake procedure and had nothing in common with any employment setting. All students had already commenced police training at the time of receiving the study invitation. To summarize, this group of voluntarily participating Swedish police trainees seems to represent a highly selected group of individuals who, based on good mental health and mature personality characteristics, can be assumed to have sufficient strength to master the stressful situations with which they will probably be faced later in their daily professional life. This is particularly true for the female trainees. There are the same substantial associations between certain personality traits and psychopathological symptoms on this undisturbed, mature and healthy level of personality and mental health that have been found relating to the comprehensive spectrum of severe psychopathology. Because of the known substantial associations between personality and coping behaviour (Suls et al. 1996), coping skills should be further developed by further improvement of cooperative skills and resources must be focussed on problem solving in typical police work situations in a sense of primary prevention of the occurrence of psychological disorders later in life. Further conclusions include that flexible attitudes should be established towards the trainees’ ownership of responsibility for the consequences of their own behaviour; and the improvement of their purposefulness and self-acceptance based on a high self congruence. In order to prevent possible psychological disturbances later in life, due to the high level of distress in their work, the development of trainees’ personality in terms of the abovementioned coping skills should be regarded as an integral part of their professional training at the police academy. Acknowledgment This work was supported by a grant to the first author from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA). We are grateful to the police trainees who agreed to participate in this study. References Aaron JDK (2000) Stress and coping in police officers. Police Quarterly 3:438–450 Backman L, Arnetz B, Levin D, Lublin Å (1997) Psychophysiological effects of mental imaging training for police trainees. Stress Med 13:43–48 Berg AM, Hem E, Lau B, Ekeberg Ø (2006) An exploration of job stress and health in the Norwegian police service: a cross sectional study. 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