Measuring and monitoring resilience throughout the military and police career

Service members of armed forces and police participating in military missions and police operations are being confronted with mentally challenging circumstances. A considerable amount of them suffers from mental health problems potentially resulting in PTSD. The aim is to increase the operational effectiveness and sustainability of personnel in operational units during threatening circumstances and to decrease attrition during training and career. Therefore, service members should be psychologically resilient and capable of applying successful coping strategies in stressful circumstances. The Military Resilience Monitor (MRM) has been developed for measuring and monitoring resilience throughout the whole military and police career, from selection and training until deployment. This symposium provides an overview of the results of studies employing MRM in different phases of the career cycle. The predictive validity of the INSPIRE Resilience Scale, a selection instrument based on MRM, has been investigated in longitudinal research in armed forces of six countries and the Dutch Police Academy with similar criterion data obtained in training, using GHQ-12 and a developed ‘performance and resilience rating scale’. More longitudinal research, also using MRM, is conducted to gain insight in the effects of resilience resources during deployment on (absence of) mental health problems five years after deployment. Research on buffering effects of resilience on the impact of being confronted with mentally challenging incidents in police training has been conducted. Finally, physiological measures of resilience, using gaming and simulation, have been validated by using MRM in order to investigate whether the trait construct can predict physiological state responses.