In this article post-shooting trauma is utilized as an arbitrary punctuation to indicate how police officers communicate their distress during this period of rapid transition in South Africa. It is argued that the medical model (with its attendant lineal causal explanations and descriptions) is inhibitively limited in describing what police officers are presently experiencing. The author motivates the advantages of perceiving and describing events from an ecosystemic perspective (which provides a contextual understanding and emphasizes relationships} . "Stress" is described as an aspect of the system as a whole and not singularly attributable to individuals alone. Among others new policing rules and roles, the turnover in personnel, and the rate of's'ocio-political changes are shown to contribute. It is argued that the Police, as society's guardians of "power" have become the "symptom bearers" for a society in the painful process of adapting to change. Recommendations regarding possible interventions are made. / Psychology / M.A. (Clinical Psychology)

In this article post-shooting trauma is utilized as an arbitrary punctuation to indicate how police officers communicate their distress during this period of rapid transition in South Africa. It is argued that the medical model (with its attendant lineal causal explanations and descriptions) is inhibitively limited in describing what police officers are presently experiencing. The author motivates the advantages of perceiving and describing events from an ecosystemic perspective (which provides a contextual understanding and emphasizes relationships} . "Stress" is described as an aspect of the system as a whole and not singularly attributable to individuals alone. Among others new policing rules and roles, the turnover in personnel, and the rate of's'ocio-political changes are shown to contribute. It is argued that the Police, as society's guardians of "power" have become the "symptom bearers" for a society in the painful process of adapting to change. Recommendations regarding possible interventions are made. / Psychology / M.A. (Clinical Psychology)

In my thesis, I postulated the target to map the methods and procedures applied by the CR Police, Regional Police Headquarters of the South-Bohemian Region within the primary, secondary as well as tertiary prevention of posttraumatic reactions and disorder. A partial target of the thesis is finding out the rate of the satisfaction with availability of intervention care for policemen and employees of the Regional Police Headquarters of the South-Bohemian Region, finding out the rate of the awareness, usability and satisfaction with the care of the posttraumatic intervention team in the South-Bohemian Region, awareness of the service Help Line in crisis and its usability. Moreover I postulated the goal to map the interest in the possible internet helpline in the scope of IZS with elaboration of SWOD analysis. Everybody, also policemen may suffer from stress reaction. Also they can have the psychical and physical signs of an acute stress reaction. They perform the most of service acts, interventions in a routine way, however, besides this, also situations occur, differing from the normal life experience and policemen get in this way very often into the stress situations, which can arouse deep mental turbulences. The impact of feelings on the mental state in case of extreme experiences is a normal human reaction in a not normal situation. At present, each policeman has the possibility to ask for help a team of specially trained experts, the team of posttraumatic intervention care. In the team, not only psychologists are working, but also experienced policemen, experts of the branch of the Ministry of Interior and the priests prepared to help with their experience, erudition and knowledge acquired by a special training. Since 2001 the impacted person may call the anonymous Crisis Help Line, which is a supporting part of the posttraumatic intervention care for the policemen, firemen, employees of the branch of the Ministry of Interior and their family members. The crisis help line is also at disposal to the public in case of extraordinary events and crisis situations. For this reason, this thesis treats the methods of posttraumatic intervention care, awareness, usability, satisfaction and trust in these branch offices of the CR Police.