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Mental toughness describes a set of attributes relating to how individuals deal with challenges, stressors, and pressure. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between mental toughness and perceived stress in police and fire officers.

The participants were 247 police officers and 130 fire fighters. Participants completed questionnaire measures of mental toughness and perceived stress, and provided information about their age, rank, and length of service within the force.

Mental toughness was found to be significantly related to perceived stress, with control of emotion, control of life, and confidence in abilities being particularly important. There was no consistent relationship of age, rank, or length of service with mental toughness and perceived stress. However, police officers reported lower levels of mental toughness and higher levels of perceived stress than fire officers.

The results suggest that assessing police and fire officers on a measure of mental toughness could provide a means of identifying individuals more likely to suffer from stress and stress-related physical and psychological illness. In addition, interventions that may enhance mental toughness could have beneficial effects within this population.

This is the first study to examine mental toughness and perceived stress within this population, and the findings have important implications for the management of stress.

It is well established that there are several benefits of taking a placement year, for example, higher academic attainment, the acquisition of transferable skills and enhanced employability. It is therefore important to understand why students choose to take or not to take a placement. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

In the current study, 159 first year students studying psychology were asked about their perceptions of the advantages and disadvantages of taking a psychology professional placement year. Their responses were analysed using thematic analysis, and the number of participants who provided information relating to each main theme was also tabulated.

Students perceived the main benefits of placements as relating to career certainty, future prospects, experience, knowledge and skills. In contrast, they perceived the main disadvantages as practical disadvantages, social/emotional disadvantages, difficulty, and there being no guaranteed benefit of a placement.

The results are discussed in terms of their potential to inform practices for developing and enhancing psychology placements within higher education. For example, providing further empirical evidence of the benefits of placements may help staff in higher education to further promote placement years.

The study contributes to the knowledge of perceived advantages and disadvantages of taking a placement in psychology. Placements in psychology are likely to be very beneficial for employability, but are often only available on a voluntary basis.

Police personnel report relatively high rates of mental health difficulties, and are at an increased risk of experiencing stress, burnout, secondary traumatic stress and anxiety as a result of the nature of their work and may also experience low compassion satisfaction. However, it is likely that the prevalence of psychological distress varies across roles. The purpose of this paper is to explore psychological distress, in a large sample of police personnel, examining differences between individuals in a number of police roles.

A questionnaire assessing experience of mental health problems, perceived stress, compassion fatigue (burnout and secondary traumatic stress), compassion satisfaction and anxiety was administered to 602 police personnel, who were classified into one of ten roles (24/7 officers, communications, firearms, crime, resolution without deployment, neighbourhood, custody, safeguarding, operations and other roles). Differences based on role and the requirement for shift work were then examined.

24/7 officers had higher compassion fatigue and lower compassion satisfaction than individuals in a number of other roles. Firearms officers had lower levels of perceived stress and anxiety. Resolution without deployment officers reported higher secondary traumatic stress and compassion fatigue. The findings also revealed that respondents who partake in shift work showed higher levels of perceived stress.

This is the first study to the authors’ knowledge to investigate experience of mental health problems and reports of psychological distress in different roles within a UK police force. The findings have important implications, for example, in terms of identifying groups who may be particularly at risk from psychological distress.

Drawing on human capital theory and sustainable career theory, this paper aims to explore the impact of undertaking an industrial placement on the “Great Eight” competencies as perceived by university students and line managers.

618 students and their line managers across three cohorts (pre-COVID-19) took part in a longitudinal quantitative study. Students completed a three-wave questionnaire at the placement's start, middle, and end. Line managers completed the questionnaire during waves two and three to offer 360-degree feedback. Descriptive statistics and repeated measures ANOVA were applied to the dataset.

The impacts of undertaking a placement were highly variable for different competencies at the sub-scale level, although at the eight-scale level, the nuance was less pronounced. However, students self-perceived that all eight competencies increased between the start and end of the placement. Surprisingly, line managers perceived students' competencies to be higher than perceived by the students.

The value of undertaking a placement is often poorly measured (e.g. satisfaction) rather than competency-based outcomes, which can lead to conclusions that are overly simplistic and difficult to use in practice. Theoretically, this study advances understanding of human capital theory and sustainable career theory by understanding the role placements can play in developing human capital and preparing university students for sustainable careers. Practically, the findings of this study can help to close the university–industry skills gap by informing curriculum and placement scheme design and supporting students to acquire personal resources and signal these to prospective employers as an antecedent to career sustainability.