More police seek counselling

More police have sought counselling, as the Christchurch terror attack and Whakaari/white Island eruption raise awareness of mental health issues facing emergency service workers.

Police spending on counselling has surged in recent years. After the March 15 mosque attacks, police mental health advisers had more than 700 confidential conversations with staff who responded to the terror attacks.

Psychotherapist Kyle Macdonald said 10-20 per cent of people exposed to traumatic events developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

He said crisis debriefings after events such as the mosque shootings or last week’s volcanic eruption could exacerbate mental health problems if handled improperly, or forced on people.

‘‘Most people have a degree of resilience and tend to recover from the event quite normally.’’

The Society of Clinical Psychology said psychological debriefing interventions could be potentially harmful and interfere with natural recovery processes following a traumatic event.

‘‘Actually the best thing you can do is go home and spend time with your family,’’ Macdonald said.

Lance Burdett, a resilience coach and former police negotiation teams national adviser, was not persuaded compulsory briefings were ineffectual.

But he said training to prepare people for traumatic incidents was often undervalued.

Police data showed a steady increase in staff using Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) counselling in recent years.

Two psychologists brought in to work with staff in Christchurch after the March 15 shootings had more than 200 oneon-one sessions with police staff.

Police said other reasons for more counselling were increasing numbers of police staff overall, and a heightened awareness in New Zealand of mental health issues.

A document provided to MPS showed police spent $320,000 on the EAP in the latest financial year.

That was 28 per cent more than the year before, and up from $132,000 six years ago.