Even with the best of resources, the job of a police officer is highly stressful. They deal with the most difficult of human circumstances – and often the most dangerous, too.
You would hope that police forces would be mindful of this and would ensure that the mental health of officers was properly looked after. However, research carried out by the Liberal Democrats show that 1.4 million days of police time were lost in the last three years due to mental ill health of both officers and community support officers.
This is worrying both in terms of the impact on the individual officers and on the effectiveness of the force.
Lib Dem Peer Brian Paddick has called for the government to take action to boost the mental health of police officers:
The figures show that mental ill health is widespread among the police service. Frontline officers deal with relentless trauma over years. This issue hasn’t been adequately addressed so far and the government must look at how they address this.
There is a stigma that is deeply embedded in the culture of the police service and it is now time to break it.
Many officers both serving and retired who deal with mental ill health want to be diagnosed and treated more quickly.
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