Características do adoecimento psicoemocional e exposição à violência entre policiais militares da cidade de Fortaleza, Ceará

Abstract

Introduction: Members of the military police are among the categories most affected by violence, being the third professional category in the list of occupations most affected by mental and physical disorders, with high rates of morbidity and mortality. Objective: To describe military policemen exposure to traumatic situations, violence and psycho-emotional illnesses. Methods: Cross-sectional descriptive study, carried out between August 2019 and March 2020 in the city of Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil. The sample consisted of 240 military police officers from five battalions in the city of Fortaleza, of both sexes, active in ostentatious policing, in effective exercise for more than six months. Property officers and those on vacation or leave were excluded. For the data collection, a self-administered electronic questionnaire was used (survey monkey®) containing socioeconomic variables, information about common mental disorders, consumption of psychoactive substances, and situations of violence experienced and/or perpetrated by the subjects. The variables were checked for logical consistency. SPSS® version 20.0 was used for analysis. Results: Most police officers were male (95.0%), young (53.8%), and married (67.5%). Police officers were victimized by violence (85.8%), especially by firearms (61.3%), and have had been exposed to psychological (45.4%), moral (40.4%) and physical (16.6%) violence. In the last year prior to data collection, 18.3% were involved in armed confrontations, 40.4% underwent assistance with finding a corpse in a state of putrefaction (16.7%) or mutilation (17.7%), and 17.1% attended occurrences with police officers dying. Aproximatelly one fifth of the sample (20.1%) reported having a common mental disorders, 7.5% were at moderate risk for tobacco dependence, and 20.1% for alcohol dependence. Conclusions: Military police officers working in the city of Fortaleza, Ceará, are victimized by various types of violence, having experienced many potentially traumatic situations, presenting symptoms of common mental disorders, and moderate risk for alcohol and tobacco dependence.