SEVEARITY INDEX OF POILCE STRESS IN GUJARAT: AN ANALYSIS OF MENTAL SYMPTOMS OF STRESS AMONG SELECTED POLICE PERSONNEL

Police Personnel of Gujarat are suffering from stress as quoted by the author himself in his previous research work in 2012. In this fast growing, globally competitive and Hi-Tech Arena it is important to check the severity of police stress. Treatment and best fitted coping strategies largely depends on the severity of stress. This study makes an attempt to check the severity of mental symptoms of stress among selected police personnel of Gujarat. The response were collected on a 5-point Likert scale which best fits in qualitative ranking but difficult to quantify exactly and differentiate the degree of response to find out the level of stress. For that purpose, the original response (5-point Scale) of the respondents have been converted into three quantitative categories by assigning a Zero to very low and low, One to moderate and Two for high and very high degree of response and the summation of these scores is termed as Severity Index (SI) of the respondents response to stress. The study makes an attempt to categorize the mental symptoms of stress into three categories i.e. High, Moderate and Low on the basis of severity and to check the severity with different demographic components.