Effects of gender and ethnicity on duty-related posttraumatic stress symptoms among urban police officers

We studied 655 urban police officers (21% female, 48% white, 24% black, and 28% Hispanic) to assess ethnic and gender differences in duty-related symp toms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We obtained self-report measu res of. a) PTSD symptoms, b) peritraumatic dissociation, c) exposure to dut y-related critical incidents, d) general psychiatric symptoms, e) response bias due to social desirability, and f) demographic variables. We found tha t self-identified Hispanic-American officers evidenced greater PTSD symptom s than both self-identified European-American and self-identified African-A merican officers. These effects were small in size but they persisted even after controlling for differences in other relevant variables. Contrary to expectation, we found no gender differences in PTSD symptoms. Our findings are of note because: a) they replicate a previous finding of greater PTSD a mong Hispanic-American military personnel and b) they fail to replicate the well-established finding of greater PTSD symptoms among civilian women.