ers. Off-duty police officers carry weapons, and the average police suicide is male. Men tend to choose more lethal methods of taking their lives like guns as opposed to methods with a greater chance of survival, such as drug overdoses. An analysis of six case-control studies of gun ownership found that owning a gun increases the risk of suicide (Cummings and Koepsell 471). Efforts to persuade officers to disarm themselves while off-duty have proven fruitless. Officers who cope with occupational stress using alcohol and drugs create a particularly lethal combination of substance abuse and gun ownership.
Exacerbating the occupational stress that police officers experience is the macho image of the officer. Police work involves significant exposure to human misery. Officers witness spousal abuse, accidents, injuries and death on a daily basis. Throughout any traumatic incident, the police officer is expected to project calm and control. Granted, officers are trained for this responsibility but a human element inevitably emerges. For instance, an officer with children might experience more devastation from seeing dead infants than an officer who is childless. This type of trauma, known as critica
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