No Stupid Questions

I've seen a bunch of dead bodies. You live long enough, people die, funerals happen. That's kind of routine.

I also found a coworker who died at work.

I was his supervisor. He had taken Monday & Tuesday off to work on his house with his brother. On Wednesday I got a call from the police where he lived. He was supposed to meet up with his brother on the previous Saturday, but he never showed up. The police called me to ask me to check if he was in his office.

He had stayed late on the Friday before his time off and died there.

That workday was pretty much over at that point. I'm not sure I needed any kind of training to deal with it. Not really sure what form that training would take.

I had a week or two where I would see his body when I closed my eyes.

It was natural causes. He was in his sixties, and he was pretty much a functional alcoholic.

He had a GI bleed. We found out later that he had an appointment scheduled to see a doctor about it. From what we pieced together afterwards, he had been vomiting &/or shitting blood and hiding it. He should have gone to the ER, but I'm not surprised he didn't.

I do kind of have most other managers beat when it comes to tough supervisory situations.

When i was in the police (UK) we did crime scene training, and a few hours of it involved talking about how we can try and cope when seeing a dead body for the first time.

The advice we were given is that basically they are no longer a person. They are a fleshy meat sack which we should consider as being evidence of a potential crime. We were told to ignore the body and concentrate on the scene.

What can we see/smell/hear. Document everything. Were lights on/off, were doors locked/unlocked. Windows open/closed. Smashed glass on the inside of the house or the outside.

It didn't matter if it was suspicious or not. We were reminded we weren't detectives, we weren't there to solve a murder, just secure evidence.

And it worked. Found a dead person on my second day. She, like every other sinilar job I'd been to had died of natural causes. But I remembered my training and just did my job.

Other cops would rely on humour. Ignore the corpse, crack jokes.

And yes, we were shown pictures of incredibly gruesome scenes. My favourite was the embolism, looked like a scene from Saw.

Considering cops barely get any training at all these days and it took decades to even consider PTSD as a possibility for armies, I'd lean towards nah.

Are you asking about seeing a dead person or seeing someone naked?

As far as cops I can’t speak for all departments but most police departments barely get taught to shoot a gun ,so they aren’t seeing corpses to desensitize them.

For the US Army no on dead people as a whole, but for nudity, you are nude around each other all the time during basic training. It is comical watching the dudes get all worked about it who can’t handle it.

There are MOS (Military Occupational Speciality) that deal with dead bodies and work in surgeries etc, so they will be exposed to dead people.

the first time they see an adult body?

I'd be very concerned if a sighted police officer had never seen an adult.

I'm sure neither do anything to prep..maybe cops.l but even then I doubt it. more important things to need to learn/focus on.

cops... they just go on vacation/leave until the next one. eventually they don't care or they keep milking it everytime.

soldiers... grow some balls and get the hell over it and continue your mission or else you'll be next..