About

Welcome to Building Resilience in Public Safety. This research project focuses on improving the psychological health and wellness of public safety employees (PSE) through improving resilience and psychological safety in the workplace. We have developed occupation-specific psychoeducational training for active members, civilians, and leadership by incorporating the 3 pillars of resilience – personal, family, and organization resilience. 

Resilience refers to the “process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands” (APA, 2022). This concept is especially important for PSE who are exposed to operational stressors (e.g., potentially psychologically traumatic events) as well as organizational stressors (e.g., shift work, overtime) that are unique to public safety organizations. The 3 pillars of resilience framework recognizes that the resilience of the individual, their family, and their workplace are interconnected. The 3 pillars dynamically and reciprocally influence each other, impacting how individuals respond over time to potentially psychologically traumatic experiences and other stressors.

We invite all PSE to take the training on individual, family, and workplace resilience to help build your resilience knowledge and skills. Each course consists of several lessons and each lesson takes about 10-25 minutes to complete. You don’t have to complete the course in one session – you can logout and then return to where you left off. We encourage you to complete the Thinking Exercises and Check Your Understanding activities to help strengthen your resilience skills and knowledge. We also encourage you to watch the videos of PSE talking about their personal experiences with overcoming stressors, and clinicians explaining how to use practical skills to increase your resilience.

The content of the training material is the property of Thompson Rivers University (TRU) and is protected by copyright law worldwide. This material may be used by participants from the public safety organizations for personal purposes only. No part of this work may be forwarded or reproduced in any form by any means without permission in writing from Dr. Greg Anderson, Thompson Rivers University, resilience@tru.ca. TRU seeks to ensure that any course content that is owned by others has been appropriately cleared for use in this course.

At the end of the course, you can download a Certificate of Completion showing that you have successfully completed the resilience training.