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How Fatigue Affects Health

Fatigue can harm an officer's mental health by:

• Increasing mood swings.
• Impairing judgment.
• Decreasing an officer's adaptability to certain situations.
• Heightening an officer's sense of threat.
• Increasing anxiety or depression.
• Increasing the chances of mental illness (e.g., officers may develop post-traumatic stress disorder or bipolar disorder).

Fatigue can harm an officer's physical health by:

• Reducing eye-hand coordination.
• Causing an officer to gain weight.
• Causing pain (e.g., backaches, headaches).
• Making an officer unable to relax (e.g., cause restless sleep, provoke heightened alert response).
• Causing gastrointestinal problems (e.g., loss of appetite, abdominal distress or ulcers).
• Damaging the cardiovascular system (e.g., causing heart disease, arteriosclerosis or congestive heart failure).