The Psychological, Physical, and Behavioral Outcomes Associated with Perceived Work Stress Among Urban Police Officers

The proposed study would determine the psychological, physical, and behavioral outcomes associated with perceived work stress among police officers. The result would be analyzed statistically using descriptive statistics. The study was conducted in the city proper of Lucena. The researcher targeted randomly selected 50 police officers equally represented by male and female police officers. The study used stratified sampling wherein the groups of male and female police officers were called as strata. The respondents from each stratum were randomly selected which means every member had an equal chance for selection. Frequency-percentage, rankings and weighted mean were used in the statistical analysis. Analysis of the results reveals the effect of work in the past six months, the effects of work stress under physical aspect it appears that high blood pressure, migraines and chronic insomnia are the usually encountered by the urban police officers. When it comes to health problems associated with anxiety encountered by selected police officers in terms of psychological aspect. Loss of sexual interest or pleasure and feeling of uncaring because of the problems become the top rank in the category. Furthermore, the effects of work stress to the police officers associated with depression in terms of psychological aspect. Feeling no interest in things, suddenly feeling scared for no reason and feeling blue are mostly faced by the urban police officers in their daily routine. In addition, the effects of work stress on the psychological aspect under somatization study reveals that headaches or pressures in head, feeling that something was going to happen at work and nausea, upset stomach are the top list effects to the urban police officers. When it comes to behavioural outcomes of police officers it shows that the interpersonal relations with their fellow officer, their children, their spouse, their significant other and their pet police officers were not affected. These police officers never gotten out of control and never have been physical (pushing, shoving and grabbing) to anyone. With regards to the effects of work stress to the police officers associated with intrapersonal relation in terms of behavioural outcomes, reveals that sometimes they feel tired even with adequate sleep, they were moody, irritable or impatient over small problems and they had difficulty concentrating on their job. Their coping mechanism took place; the police officers always try to act as if nothing is bothering them. Frequently, police officers talk to spouse, relative, or friend about the problem; make a plan of action and follow it and exercise regularly to reduce tension. Police officer displays response in perceptions of urban police officers on these coping mechanisms. It reveals that respondents strongly agree that coping mean finding a better way to learn the situation and coping with stress aren’t contributing to their emotional and physical health.