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Stress plays an important role in human life. Under normal conditions it has a favorable influence. However, constant pathological stress can be harmful. The results can be depression, leading sometimes to alcohol and/or drug abuse, or suicide. Some specific groups of society are affected by stress more frequently and more severely. One of these groups is the police. This article aims to identify key psychosocial problems which police officers of Lithuania are encountering in an independent post‐communist state. The common social situation in Lithuania is briefly reviewed and the main stress factors which influence police officers are evaluated using a specially developed Lithuanian University of Law Questionnaire (LULQ). The stress factors having the greatest negative effect are the administrative problems of police work, family problems, and an ineffective criminal justice system. The results are compared with similar studies carried out in the USA. The necessity of amendments in LULQ and survey design, as well as the development of a program of police officer psychophysiological “abilitation” and rehabilitation, are discussed.

This paper aims to take a look at police‐specific factors of stress – police stressors – and to assess the effects of these factors on police officer burnout. The paper also seeks to test the linearity of these effects.

The study focuses on four stressors: defective leadership, role conflicts, threat of violence, and time pressure. As a measure of burnout, Bergen Burnout Indicator 15 is used. The data are cross‐section in nature and come from the Police Personnel Barometer (PPB) conducted in Finland in 2008. The PPB‐survey targeted the entire police administration in Finland. The response rate was 67.2 percent (n=6,871). The current paper uses a sub‐sample of police officers (constable rank) from three functional areas of policing (n=2,821).

Controlling for age, gender, education, shift work, tenure and the function of the police officer, the effects of the different stressors on burnout were all statistically significant. Statistically significant and robust nonlinear effects of the stressors on burnout were also found.

The study introduces a new measure of stress to analyze police work. It takes a preliminary look at the reliability and validity of the measure. The study considers linear as well as nonlinear effects of the stressors on burnout and suggests that the effects under scrutiny are essentially nonlinear.