INTRODUCTION TO OCCUPATIONAL STRESS INJURIES: Operational and Organizational Stressors Among Public Safety Personnel

To lay the groundwork for the following chapters, we begin this introduction with a broad overview and overture of the book’s central themes, concepts, and goals. We lay the conceptual ground for the chapter by unpacking how gender and stress inform the experiences of public safety personnel (PSP) and draw attention to the interaction between physical, mental, and social health. Here, we define the relevant key terms, including operational stress injuries (OSIs), occupational stress injuries, and PSP, used throughout the book to show how authors employ these concepts. The chapter concludes with a roadmap of the book in the form of breakdowns of the topics explored in each chapter that constitutes this edited collection.