A question recently posted to Quora asks, “do correctional officers have a higher suicide rate than the rest of the population?” Check out the response from Michelle Ma below, and add your own responses in the comments.
They have a very hard job, one in which a substantial amount of effort is devoted to preventing suicides within the prison population. There is the risk of physical violence on a daily basis, and no matter how careful they are, prisoners are super inventive about how they hide weapons. I don’t think for many officers it’s their top choice job; however, I also don’t think they’re as known for job linked mental illness as dentists or lawyers.
According to one statistical archive however, correctional officers have a 39 percent higher chance of suicide than the average for other occupations. All in all, for an occupation that pays under $40,000 a year, correctional officers face a lot of hazards. Some have been physically attacked, brutally; many are regularly subject to prisoners throwing feces and urine at them, female officers are victim to male prisoners masturbating or stripping.
Being a correctional officer spills over on every day life because it’s easy to overreact. Good officers have to overreact because if they react too slow in a prison situation, it could mean life or death. I would say that it’s one of the commonly held jobs that’s the very hardest to not take home with you and this can really injure one’s intimate relationships with friends and family.
