Mindfulness Based Resilience Training for First Responders: Results from an Open Label Pilot Trial with Law Enforcement Officers

Background and Purpose

Law enforcement officers (LEOs) face chronic occupational stressors that erode mental health, diminish emotion regulation capacity, and damage relational well-being, yet few resilience interventions are congruent with law enforcement culture and designed to address these domains explicitly. Here, we report findings from an open-label pilot trial of Mindfulness-Based Resilience Training for First Responders (MBRT-FR), an eight-week, group-based intervention integrating mindful attention, emotion regulation, and relational skills for LEOs. The study had three aims: evaluating feasibility and preliminary acceptability, examining pre-to-post and pre-to-follow-up changes across key outcome domains, and generating effect size benchmarks to inform a future well-powered randomized controlled trial.

Methods

Three sequential cohorts of LEOs (n=25) from a mid-size Southwestern police agency participated in MBRT-FR. Participation was voluntary and restricted to the rank of Sergeant and below to facilitate open group communication. Four outcomes were assessed at baseline (T1), post-intervention (T2), and follow-up (T3): mindful attention, emotion regulation difficulties, emotional intelligence, and interpersonal relationship functioning. Intervention effects were examined using mixed-effects models with random intercepts estimated via restricted maximum likelihood, retaining all available observations under a missing-at-random assumption. Effect sizes were estimated with Cohen's d using the within-person residual variance as the denominator. Scales were coded so that larger numbers reflected improvement. Intervention acceptability was assessed via participant retention and brief qualitative interviews at T2 and T3.

Results

Likelihood ratio tests supported random intercept specifications across all outcomes (all p ≤ .001), with intraclass correlation coefficients ranging from 0.58 to 0.85, reflecting stable between-person variance. A consistent pattern emerged across the full outcome battery: effects were uniformly positive in direction, and T3 effect sizes exceeded T2 counterparts for all outcomes. Statistically significant improvements were observed at T3 for emotion regulation difficulties (d = 0.82, p = 0.04) and interpersonal relationship functioning (d = 0.84, p = 0.03), both exceeding Cohen's threshold for a large effect. Emotional intelligence approached significance at T3 (d = 0.74, p = 0.06). Mindful attention showed small-to-medium T3 effects (d = 0.25 and d = 0.41, respectively) that did not reach statistical significance. Qualitative interviews supported intervention acceptability. Retention was strong: of 25 initial participants, 22 completed all MBRT-FR sessions.

Conclusions

MBRT-FR demonstrated feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary signals of efficacy across emotion regulation difficulties, interpersonal relationship functioning, and emotional intelligence outcomes, with effect size increasing over time. The temporal pattern of results, uniformly larger at T3 than T2, is consistent with a skills-consolidation model of intervention change. Findings provide preliminary support for MBRT-FR as a culturally congruent and potentially efficacious resilience intervention for LEOs. Unique in the resilience literature for LEOs, MBRT-FR offers a potential pathway for improving interpersonal skills and relational wellbeing in this population.