What Every Police Wellness Program Needs To Include

May 6

Wellness seems to be the buzzword around law enforcement departments and what we’re noticing is that agencies tend to be on a spectrum concerning how much or how little they’re doing to actually promote wellness.

Often, we think of wellness as just physical and mental health but really it’s the act of practicing multiple healthy habits daily or regularly.

In this article, we’ll share 8 different wellness categories for officer wellness programs to consider as well as providing specific examples that your agency can implement immediately.

As we approach this topic, it’s important to recognize that there are 2 types of perspectives when developing wellness initiatives – the agency and the individual. Individual wellness comes down a single person taking actions that are necessary to care for themselves physically, mentally, spiritually, etc.. Agency wellness is about building a culture that allows for individual wellness to take place.

Image credit: https://shcs.ucdavis.edu/health-and-wellness/eight-dimensions-wellness

With that in mind, here are 8 interdependent categories that every police wellness program needs to consider providing:

Physical
Emotional
Intellectual
Social
Spiritual
Occupational
Financial
Environmental

We have seen many wellness coordinators or wellness program directors who create entire programs built around what they think these categories should look like. This fails almost everytime. Instead of making this common mistake, we highly recommend asking employees what interests them in these categories.

If you’re looking for a third party option to survey your department, TacMobility’s data analyst team can provide a simple survey along with a report of findings which can help your agency direct energy and budget dollars to the right areas. Click here to email us.

Looking for specific ways to provide agency and individual wellness? Here are 15 ideas:

Agency Wellness:

· Yearly mental health check-ins

· Free therapy sessions with LE competent therapists

· Chiropractor/massage visits at the department

· Free gym memberships or onsite fitness centers

· Provide daycare – even if just a few times a year

· Prioritize a wellness budget so you can approve the things your officers are wanting

· Help officer’s that are having personal problems by simply listening, offering resources that you have used in the past or providing time off (in a non-punitive way)

· Leadership, practice wellness outloud – change is top-down.

Individual Wellness:

· Try new hobbies quarterly - you might be surprised at what you end up liking

· Date your partner regularly

· Reduce the shitty things you say about yourself

· Switch out a few eating habits to a healthier version

· Organize your finances or do a savings challenge

· De-clutter your house so your brain can think

· Stop taking OT every time it’s offered, instead do something fun

Written by Mel Koenen

Mel is a licensed associate therapist that specializes in first responders and is the wife of a trooper. She is passionate about bringing good, practical wellness solutions to first responders.

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