Kathleen Padilla

An Examination of Stress, Mental Health Care Services, and Barriers to Accessing Mental Health Care Services among Police Officers

Texas State University Assistant Professor

Kathleen Padilla is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University. She received her Bachelor’s of Criminal Justice from New Mexico State University in 2014, her Masters of Science in Criminology and Criminal Justice from ASU in 2016, and her PhD in Criminology and Criminal Justice from ASU in 2021. 

Kathleen is focused on practical research that involves agency and community partnerships. In particular, she is interested in examining police officer mental health and wellness, as well as departmental responses to poor officer health. Additionally, her work focuses on the ways in which police officers interact with the community, particularly youth of color. This is exemplified in two key ways: (1) by the creation and collection efforts of original data in collaboration with a police department for both her master’s thesis and doctoral dissertation, and (2) by her involvement in past and ongoing projects with Dr. Adam Fine evaluating the Team Kids Challenge and its impact on officer and youth perceptions of one another. 

Kathleen’s dissertation focused on the sources and severity of stress among police officers in a predominately Hispanic/Latinx police department through primary data collection and incorporates an interdisciplinary and mixed methods approach toward data analysis. Her postdoctoral research work is focused on a randomized controlled trial evaluation of an officer wellness program, where she has been responsible for interviewing officers, creating comprehensive surveys, and training and managing an undergraduate research assistant. 

Her work has been featured in academic outlets such as Journal of Experimental Criminology, Occupational Medicine, Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, and Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, as well as non-academic outlets such as The Conversation and ASU Now. Kathleen is also a member of ASU’s Youth Justice Lab, led by Dr. Adam Fine, where she works with undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral students, leading a qualitative project on police officer perceptions of the Team Kids Challenge.

Kathleen is seeking to continue engaging in agency- and community-oriented work to advance work on police officer health, wellness, and community-relations.