Samenvatting

Several policy measures have recently been undertaken to enhance resilience in Dutch police officers. The author of this article argues that these initiatives rely on false beliefs about the stressful nature of police work. Police officers are often exposed to traumatic or otherwise stressful events, but this does not necessarily render them at an increased risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other (trauma-related) psychosocial problems. After a discussion of empirical studies which support his view, he speculates that these false beliefs are grounded in the Western tendency to qualify stressful events as (potentially) traumatic. This tendency to medicalize stressful events is reflected both in the history of the diagnostic criteria for PTSD in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the empirical literature. The author concludes with pointing out a potential negative by-effect of this medicalization tendency: simulating PTSD (symptoms) for external motives, such as financial gain.