4 - (SYM 11) An Examination of Factors Associated with Police Stigma Towards Black Individuals with Serious Mental Illness:

Police-induced deaths have disproportionately involved individuals with serious mental illness (SMI), particularly Black men (Dempsey et al., 2020). Our first qualitative study explores themes that emerged from 20 semi-structured interviews, 1.5 hours each, with police officers who discussed factors and resources that they think may help officers better navigate their interactions with Black people with SMI and reduce the likelihood of future violent interactions. Our second quantitative study was an online survey of 107 police officers that examined factors associated with police stigma towards individuals with SMI. As hypothesized, regression analysis, controlling for age, education, and income indicated that psychological distress (b = .43, p < .001) and suicidality (SI; b = .41, p < .001) were both associated with higher stigma towards individuals with schizophrenia.  Contrary to expectations, there was no main effect linking social justice attitudes to officers’ stigma toward people with schizophrenia.  However, when stigma was regressed on social justice attitudes (b = -.02, p = .825), distress (b = .46, p < .001), and their interaction (b = .23, p = .015), after controlling for age, education, and income, a significant interaction was present. Similarly, after controlling for age, education, and income, when stigma was regressed on social justice attitudes (b = -.06, p = .490), SI (b = .39, p < .001), and their interaction (b = .16, p = .085), an interaction was present. In both cases, simple slopes analyses revealed that when police officers’ distress and SI were low the relationship between social justice attitudes and police officers’ stigma toward individuals with schizophrenia was significant and negative. However, when police officers’ distress and SI was average and high no relationship exists between social justice attitudes and stigma. Stigma toward others is a form of non-physical aggression that can be highly correlated with physical aggression (Vincent, Peterson & Parrot, 2016). Both qualitative and quantitative findings suggest that efforts to bolster officers’ own mental health may be one indirect way to reduce stigma and aggression toward people with SMI. Lowering distress and SI is also important because high levels of distress seem to weaken the prosocial benefits of officers’ social justice attitudes.  Improving the mental health of officers may have the biggest benefit for Black men with schizophrenia, as they are currently the population most likely to experience police violence (Dempsey et al., 2020).