How Fatigue Affects Health
Fatigue can harm an officer's mental health by:
- Increasing mood swings.
- Impairing judgment.
- Decreasing an officer's adaptability to certain situations.
- Heightening an officer's sense of threat.
- Increasing anxiety or depression.
- Increasing the chances of mental illness (e.g., officers may develop post-traumatic stress disorder or bipolar disorder).
Fatigue can harm an officer's physical health by:
- Reducing eye-hand coordination.
- Causing an officer to gain weight.
- Causing pain (e.g., backaches, headaches).
- Making an officer unable to relax (e.g., cause restless sleep, provoke heightened alert response).
- Causing gastrointestinal problems (e.g., loss of appetite, abdominal distress or ulcers).
- Damaging the cardiovascular system (e.g., causing heart disease, arteriosclerosis or congestive heart failure).
Date Created: January 6, 2009