THE QUALITATIVE DIMENSIONS OF OPERATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL STRESS IN EQUITY-DESERVING MILITARY AND PUBLIC SAFETY PERSONNEL

Abstract

Public Safety Personnel (PSP) and Military Personnel (MP) face high rates of potentially traumatic exposures as part of their on-the-job service. As a result, they frequently experience highly impactful Occupational Stress Injuries (OSI), which contribute to complex experiences of mental, health, social, and functional injuries. The individual experience of these injuries is mediated by domain of the causal stressor, including whether it stemmed from an operational factor (i.e., the unique operational demands of the position) or an organizational factor (i.e., systemic stressors associated with employment environment). Military Sexual Trauma (MST) and Military Sexual Misconduct (MSM) are two organizational stressors which involve systemically-normalized sexual violence and discrimination within military environments. MSM and MST unfairly target equity-deserving community members, such as woman-identifying personnel and 2SLGBTQIA+ personnel. By belonging to an equity-deserving community, these communities face an additive impact of distinctive personal factors (e.g., person-specific factors such as gender identity or sexual orientation), which predicate more complex experiences of OSI. In Chapter 2 (Study 1), we qualitatively outline how PSP personally describe their experience of OSI-related PTSD symptoms. In Chapter 3 (Study 2), we qualitatively examine the emotional, social, and functional outcomes of an organizational stressor, MSM, in an equity-deserving community of MP (i.e., woman-identifying military Veterans). Finally, in Chapter 4 (Study 3), we qualitatively assess the mental, social, and functional implications of MST in another equity-deserving population (i.e., the 2SLBTQIA+ military community) using a scoping review methodology.