Mental Health and Performance of Thai Traffic Police

Abstract

     The number of traffic accidents in Bangkok has increased along with workload of traffic police, that are associated with mental health of traffic police. The identification of factors associated with mental health allow us to propose primary prevention measure for this important traffic police problem. The objectives of this research were as follows: 1) To study correlation between personal factors, work-family conflict, social support, personality, and mental health of traffic police. 2) To predict mental health of traffic police through co-predictive variables composed of age, length of work, rank, work-family conflict, social support and personality. 3) To study the correlation between mental health and work performance. The samples were 229 traffic police in Metropolitan Police Division 2. The questionnaires comprise of 5 part: personal factors, work-family conflict, social support, personality trait was estimated by The Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI) and mental health was measured by Thai GHQ-30. The statistics included chi -square, percentage, Spearman rank correlation coefficient, Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient, and stepwise multiple regression analysis. The results showed that age, experience, rank, social support and personality (extraversion, neuroticism) were positively correlated and work-family conflict was negatively correlated, with mental health. Work-family conflict, social support, age and personality variable (extraversion, neuroticism) were statistical significant predictors of the mental health at 28.4%. Correlation analysis revealed a significant positive relation of mental health and work performance of Thai traffic police at the .001 significant level.