Abstract:

This meta-analysis was designed to explore the status of mental health about Chinese policemen of public security organization and assess the effects of six demographic variables and three characteristics of studies on the policemen’ mental health. Sixty-seven primary studies from 1996-2015 that met the requirements of meta-analysis were selected, including total subjects of 50371. By comparing the scores of nine SCL-90 factors from these studies with the two national norms, only the effect size of the interpersonal sensitivity factor was not significant (SMD = 0.049 points, 95% CI = −0.017 to 0.115, p = 0.142) while other factors’ SMDs reached significant level. According to comparing with the soldier norm, there were five factors with significant but small SMDs (SMD = −0.156~0.210, p = 0.000~0.041). The results showed that the mental health of the policemen were worse than the normal and similar to the soldier. Except gender, demographic variables and research characteristic variables such as age, marital status, educational level, division of police service, region and the sample size have significant influence on the policemen’s mental health. Several unresolved issues and future research directions are also discussed.

Key words: SCL-90, mental health, meta-analysis