Initial findings (September 2018) from the Post-Incident Trauma Processing Techniques RCT with new recruits at Greater Manchester Police already suggest that the techniques improve both wellbeing and recall...
The Randomised Controlled Trial encourages the application of hippocampal spatial (and episodic) processing to police-related trauma exposures and emanates from research with Professor Chris Brewin (UCL), Combat Stress (Kaur et al., 2016) and Bournemouth University (Miller, Wiener et al., 2014, 2016, 2017). The techniques involve drawing shifting perspectives and timelines and builds on similar techniques used in the Cognitive Interview (Milne et al., 2007; Hope et al., 2013). The skills are taught using pen and paper after basic neuropsycho-education into trauma processing and the 'policing brain'.
There is a statistically significant improvement in participants' sense of ease with specific trauma exposures at work after applying the techniques, and 68% of participants (n = 29) recalled new information about the incident in question. These findings build on interim results in May which suggested that 76% of participants (n = 43) felt a positive change in feeling about difficult experiences, and 54% recalled new information. What is more, the training effect showed consistency between sessions. Data analysis between trial and control group trauma impact will continue until the end of March 2019.
What is more, participants reported that having response officers and inspectors co-train with them was one of the most helpful components of the course. For that, we would like to thank Kevin Maddick and Lee Jackson from Durham for their invaluable support, as well as Ewen Sim from Lancashire and Dave from Counter Terrorism. You bring this work to life!
If you would like to find out more about these techniques, email research@pdtrust.org.
