Do executioners often suffer trauma?

[dstebbins]

I know a lot of "necessary evil" occupations have high rates of depression, anxiety, and various other forms of trauma. Solder in the military is, hands down, the most common example. Firefighters are also at very high risk for anxiety, as are cops. Therapists and lawyers often suffer from "compassion fatigue."

 

I just saw a WhatCulture video about strange last meal requests, and that prompted me to go and watch some death row documentaries on Youtube.

 

I tried to picture myself as an executioner. It's my job to hold one of those five rifles and pull the trigger. It's my job to flip the switch to pump the poison gas into the chamber. I wonder how I would feel if that's what I had to do to put food on the table.

 

It was a scary feeling.

 

Do executioners often suffer similar anxiety or other forms of trauma that are common in the justice/medical fields?

[iNow]

Depends. I suspect a lot of people who are perfectly okay with killing self-select into such jobs. I also suspect lots of people doing it struggle to process their acts and experience psychological issues as a result. I suspect there are myriad shades of gray along the spectrum in between. Finally, I don't think you'll ever find decent data here to confirm one way or another since it's such a small population actually engaged in such work overall and few would ever speak openly about it.

Edited March 8, 2016 by iNow

[dstebbins]

few would ever speak openly about it.

Do they really need to speak openly about it? Therapists are trained to notice the symptoms of anxiety and trauma.

 

Criminals can often hide evidence and feign ignorance, but unlike criminals, trauma patients are rarely A) aware of their disorder, B) want to hide it, C) know the signs, and D) are good enough at acting that they can supress traumatic outbursts without even so much as an eyebrow twitch.

 

Therapists are really good at giving verbal and visual stimuli to patients in order to involuntarily and subconsciously trigger symptoms in suffering patients. It's a lot harder for you to hide evidence of trauma from a doctor than it is to hide evidence of murder from cops.

[Sirona]

Well, it depends. We are assuming that if they've chosen that particular job that they support the death penalty and probably don't have a moral qualm with executing those that have been tried and found guilty for heinous crimes. They probably do feel somewhat emotional after, which would be a natural response but they're probably able to rationalise and justify their actions with their personal views on justice. Supporting an ideology and carrying out the duty aren't that different; if they personally didn't carry out the job, someone else would. Some people are fairly adept at compartmentising and this particular job would attract those that are able to control their emotions.

[iNow]

People who pilot drones from suburban US and launch strikes in the Middle East do frequently experience these types of issues. Perhaps that can serve as a proxy to help answer this.

 

http://www.npr.org/2015/06/06/412525635/can-drone-pilots-be-diagnosed-with-post-traumatic-stress-disorder

[dstebbins]

but they're probably able to rationalise and justify their actions with their personal views on justice.

Well, couldn't the same be said about soldiers in the army? Most of them accept war as a necessary evil if they want to protect the nation, but they still get PTSD from killing.

 

PTSD is rooted in the sub-conscious. Telling your conscious self that it has to be done doesn't help.

[Sirona]

Well, couldn't the same be said about soldiers in the army? Most of them accept war as a necessary evil if they want to protect the nation, but they still get PTSD from killing.

 

PTSD is rooted in the sub-conscious. Telling your conscious self that it has to be done doesn't help.

In war you're killing soldiers, most of whom are not 'bad' people but nationalistic, misguided, believe they are doing the right thing etc (essentially most are 'good'). As an executioner you're killing criminals (rapists, serial killers, murderers). I fail to see your comparison.

 

Note: I am not an advocate of the death penalty, nor am I saying all life is not equal. I am merely saying that I believe people that choose this as a job would have this mind set.

Edited March 8, 2016 by Sirona

[ajb]

Depending on the county (society), the systems will be different, but in the US don't they use more than one executioner and a randomisation process so that no individual can be sure that they actually killed the prisoner? The traditional way with a firing squad is to load some of the guns with blanks.

 

I think the idea of this is too lessen the guilt. Because of this, I would assume that in that 'trade' it is accepted that it is not easy and stressful.

 

We know for example that many of the Germans who were involved in the final solution also mentally suffered quite badly; though they felt they were just doing a job and an important one for their country and even mankind. Some of them were more-or-less totally schooled under a Nazi system and told that Jews were not really people, yet some of them still found the actual killing difficult on them.

 

So I think it is rather inevitable that executioners in general will suffer mentally.

[Sirona]

From my understanding, policemen, fire fighters and soldiers experience PTSD when they are placed in danger personally (being shot at, engulfed in smoke, physically attacked, etc) and witnessing their friends and/or colleagues harmed or killed. For example, fire fighters experience PTSD but they don't kill anymore, it's the danger of the job, a traumatic event such as the loss of a colleague etc which causes the stress.

I think this is a bit of a loaded question. What about the judge that sentenced the criminal? What about the jury that decided? What about the system that enabled it? By phrasing the question like this, you're asking us to agree with you. A vegetarian may for example ask if the slaughterer at the abattoir gets PTSD.

Edited March 8, 2016 by Sirona

[StringJunky]

From what I've read, a lot do get affected in the end. It seems apparent that they do by the fact that many death penalty authorities introduce an element of uncertainty into who actually delivers the coups de grace; 5 bullets and one blank for a six man firing squad, for example, or several buttons to trigger a trapdoor.

Edited March 8, 2016 by StringJunky

[Xalatan]

My understanding of ptsd is that the diagnosis is based on the perceived threat of an event to self, typically for the fear of losing life, a limb, or loved ones. The job of an executioner may not necessarily exposes the person to threat of such catastrophic or dangerous nature, though that's not to say given the right context cases can't exist, especially if the symptomology is present. Acute stress disorder may be a plausible differential for novice executioners.

[iNow]

In other words, it depends.

[Sirona]

In other words, it depends.

Essentially yes, however this can be said about any job that posseses danger/threat, injury or death of colleagues or a traumatic event such as bullying and/or harassment.

Edited March 9, 2016 by Sirona

[iNow]

The same applies in many contexts and situations, really, not just jobs.

 

The OP asks how people with a specific type of employment respond to a specific set of stimuli. It depends on the nature of the stimulus, the nature of the person, how long and with what frequency and intensity they've been exposed to said stimulus, what sort of life they've lived prior to initiation of the stimulus, what their genetic predisposition and neurotypicality, what led to the application of the stimulus and can it be simply deemed justified and rationalized as equitable, to what types of social groups does the individual they belong, what sort of coping mechanisms do they use, what's happening in their personal life, what the weather is, etc ad infinitum...

 

I know you grasp this. My comments are more directed at the OP. We can speak in broad generalities and it's an interesting question, but one resistant to simple definitive answers.

Edited March 9, 2016 by iNow

[Bells]

I know a lot of "necessary evil" occupations have high rates of depression, anxiety, and various other forms of trauma. Solder in the military is, hands down, the most common example. Firefighters are also at very high risk for anxiety, as are cops. Therapists and lawyers often suffer from "compassion fatigue."

 

I just saw a WhatCulture video about strange last meal requests, and that prompted me to go and watch some death row documentaries on Youtube.

 

I tried to picture myself as an executioner. It's my job to hold one of those five rifles and pull the trigger. It's my job to flip the switch to pump the poison gas into the chamber. I wonder how I would feel if that's what I had to do to put food on the table.

 

It was a scary feeling.

 

Do executioners often suffer similar anxiety or other forms of trauma that are common in the justice/medical fields?

 

 

 

There have been some papers about this..

 

One famous study, "The Role of Moral Disengagement in the Execution Process" touches on this issue quite well. I think it will pretty much answer all the questions the OP has.

 

Do they suffer trauma? They suffer from stress, but they are also able to distance themselves somewhat, sometimes. Yes, of course if affects them, but the manner in which the executioners themselves are able to distance themselves is interesting as it is worrying. As the Osofsky study found:

 

Members of the execution team adopted a firm compartmentalization of their worklife and homelife: “My life is like a switch. I turn it on when I get here and turn it off when I leave. I won’t let myself take my job home.” The compartmentalization of their worklife extended to their other social relationships as well: “We don’t speak about it and we don’t talk about what we do back there. We do our job proudly, but we don’t want to talk about it with anyone.” Psychosocial severance of one’s worklife reduced social evaluative stressors, but the management of one’s psychic life presented coping challenges. Executioners tried to control unwanted thoughts about the executions mainly by thought suppression: “I don’t try to think about it. I look at it as a job. I don’t take it home and I don’t discuss it with my kinds. I treat it as a job.” Efforts to ban unwanted thoughts may only exacerbate the cognitive control problem because the very negation of the thought contains the thought (Wegner, 1989). Some of the participants described unwanted intrusions as a lingering problem. “After it was over, I was satisfied with the way it had turned out and that we had done such a good job with no glitches. I was really pleased, but at the same time, the execution kept bringing up a lot of emotions.” [Source]

 

It is a very interesting study and I found it a tad disturbing because I am against the death penalty, mostly because I find it difficult to understand how they can simply switch off that way and I am concerned that they are able to do it and the fact that they do then have to cope with the emotions that bubble up to the surface. And I ask myself, whether better systems should be in place to help these men and women. But that is a subject matter for another thread.

 

Michael Osofsky also wrote a shorter paper on the subject of how executioners cope, which can be accessed here: "The Psychological Experience of Security Officers Who Work With Executions".

 

________________________

 

Works cited:

 

* Osofsky, Michael J., Albert Bandura, and Philip G. Zimbardo. "The Role of Moral Disengagement in the Execution Process." Law and Human Behavior 29.4 (2005): 371-93. University of Kentucky. 4 Aug. 2005. Web. <http://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Bandura/Bandura2005LHB.pdf>.

 

* Osofsky, Michael J. Psychiatry: Interpersonal and Biological Processes 65.4 (2002): 358-70. May 2002. Web. <http://web.stanford.edu/group/journal/cgi-bin/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Osofsky_SocSci_2002.pdf>.

[Marto]

In war you're killing soldiers, most of whom are not 'bad' people but nationalistic, misguided, believe they are doing the right thing etc (essentially most are 'good'). As an executioner you're killing criminals (rapists, serial killers, murderers). I fail to see your comparison.

 

Note: I am not an advocate of the death penalty, nor am I saying all life is not equal. I am merely saying that I believe people that choose this as a job would have this mind set.

I don't think soldiers think of enemy soldiers as misguided. They think of them as bad. You would be reasonable, most soldiers would probably not want to entertain that mindset when their life is on the line.

Edited March 26, 2016 by Marto

[Sirona]

I don't think soldiers think of enemy soldiers as misguided. They think of them as bad. You would be reasonable, most soldiers would probably not want to entertain that mindset when their life is on the line.

What I meant was that they are perceived by people who don't support killing and war as misguided, however, even so it doesn't make them 'bad' per se. However, I would like to think that people aren't as simplistic as grouping people into 'good' and 'bad' categories; it's more likely that they see that the ideology they support is wrong, hence being misguided and not 'bad'. They kill because that's what they've signed up to do and perhaps some do at first think in such simplistic terms such as 'good' and 'bad', however, through experience they would realise it isn't so. There is a lot of literature to support this also.

Edited March 26, 2016 by Sirona