Active, Adaptive and Maladaptive Coping Strategies in Relation to Mental Health of Police Personnel

The study was aimed to investigate relationship between active, adaptive and maladaptive coping strategies and mental health in police personnel. The sample included 100 constables, 100 inspectors and 100 officers incidentally selected from Uttar Pradesh (UP) police department. The Brief COPE scale (Carver, 1997) and Mental Health Inventory (Jagdish & Srivastava, 1983) were administered on them. Pearson’s product moment correlations demonstrate that in all police personnel, relationship between the three types of coping strategies and mental health is largely found to be positive. The positive correlation of mental health is found to be significant in relation to active and adaptive strategies in inspectors and in relation to the active strategies alone in the case of Officers. However in constables the correlations are not found to be significant.