This study reports on the anti-terrorist missions assigned to officers of the Multipurpose Intervention Unit of the National Police (UIP-PN) of Ouagadougou. Its aim is to highlight the stress factors and elucidate the coping strategy used by the anti-terrorist police of Ouagadougou. The methodological approach of the study is based on a single case sample. It is therefore based on a qualitative approach requiring a semi-directive interview as data collection technique. The psychodynamic approach to work serves as a theoretical model for analysing the findings. These
findings reveal less than stellar working conditions and a management style that is less productive and therefore less fulfilling. The related clinical dashboard reveals a kind of fear, anguish, anxiety and pressure linked to the subject's inactivity. This suffering due to inactivity, once the mission is over, is a hyperactivity from which the subject cannot escape. Clearly, the ineffectiveness of health care, mainly for physical injuries, communication and organisational deficit and the resulting distress, testify the relevance of the objective set by this study. Thus, the adaptive strategies developed to counteract pathological stress revolve around cultural and religious beliefs, the individual strategy of defending voluntary blinkers, recognition, the feeling of accountability due to satisfactory health care for war wounded and the strategy of communicational distortion.

Keywords: Ouagadougou, adaptive strategies, occupational stress