Abstract
M.A.
From the literature on suicide, clearly the incidence of suicide is highest amongst police officials compared to other occupational groups. Individuals with the high-risk careers - such as police officials in South Africa - are seen to be more prone to commit suicide more often than those whose careers do not involve danger, violence and death on a daily basis. However, apart from this, other important issues must be understood about the police culture when discussing police suicide. Currently, the SAPS have made the investigation of police suicide a high priority project for 1998. This piece of research could
contribute to the National Suicide Prevention Strategy by looking at another focus of police suicide namely the impact on family and colleagues when members of the SAPS commit suicide. The main belief before this research was carried out was that the family would suffer a loss while colleagues will just have low work morale. However, is this the full reality of the situation or are there other factors such as family disintegration, identity confusion and so on, which needed investigation? However, once the research was completed it was realized that there are other factors, which included emotional impact, social impact, economic impact and cultural impact. This study has also been an effort to contribute to further research that is being developed by the police. It may lead to prevention strategies; programs and so on being developed to help both the family and the colleagues. This research was carried out by the use of in-depth interviews with
family members and colleagues of SAPS officials that worked for police stations in the Johannesburg area namely the Langlaagte and Johannesburg Central police departments and who had committed suicide between 1996 and 1998. This research focused on the emotional, social, economic and cultural impact. It was found that the families are affected by the emotional, social, economic and cultural impact in some way while the colleagues are only affected in the emotional and social aspects.