This study examined the variations in critical incident stress debriefing (CISD) to determine any impact on officers' perceived effectiveness of the debriefing as well as PTSD symptoms. CISDs were facilitated solely by a mental health professional, a peer-trained officer, or both and were either mandated or voluntary. Male and female law enforcement officers from 11 different law enforcement agencies in 4 states completed a general questionnaire and the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R).

It was believed that those individuals who were debriefed would report fewer PTSD symptoms of increased arousal, avoidance, and intrusion than those who did not attend a debriefing. Although there were no symptom differences according to the IES-R scores between the debriefed and non-debriefed groups after conducting a MANCOVA, the amount of time since the critical incident had a significant mitigating impact on symptomatology (p < .01).

It was thought that mandatory CISD with a mental health professional facilitator would result in fewer PTSD symptoms after controlling for the amount of time since the critical incident. The MANCOVA analyses revealed no significant differences depending on either the voluntary or mandatory nature of the debriefing or the facilitator. However, CISD attendees perceived the debriefing to be more effective at preventing and alleviating symptoms when a mental health professional was present (p < .05). The ANCOVA generated results contradictory to the hypothesis. Whether the CISD was mandatory or voluntary had no impact on perceived effectiveness.

A partial correlation was conducted to assess the relationship between the officers' report of effectiveness and the PTSD symptoms of intrusion, avoidance, and hyperarousal. Interestingly, a positive correlation indicated that the more effective officers reported the CISD to be, the more PTSD symptoms they were experiencing. Statistically significant results were found for all three symptom scales. Implications of these findings, limitations of this study, and future research ideas are discussed.