Abstract
Police officers commonly attend suicide callouts. Such work can have negative psychological and emotional consequences. This Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis study explored how police officers (N = 9; 8 males and one female; M age = 43 years) in New Zealand experienced and managed the psychological impacts of occupational exposure to suicide. Three key themes were developed: (1) The need to become self-reliant which describes how coping independently became a necessity; (2) The need to decompress with colleagues, with informal peer debriefing and dark humor being preferred coping strategies over professional help; and (3) Developing a thick skin, whereby repeated exposure and desensitization appeared to reduce acute distress but also seemed to contribute to emotional numbing and reduced empathy among participants. Within what was perceived as a policing culture that discouraged negative emotional expression and vulnerability, participants described a tendency to conceal their distress, seemingly linked to fears of negative judgment.