Police warn of a crisis as 10,000 officers signed off with stress

ALMOST 10,000 police officers were signed off with stress and anxiety in the past year, according to Freedom of Information requests sent to all 43 police forces in England and Wales.

The number has risen by 77 per cent over the past four years.

In the year to March 2018, there were 9,672 officers who took time off for stress, depression, anxiety and posttraumatic stress disorder, compared with 5,460 in the same period in 2014.

The highest number were at the Met Police, with 1,086 officers off sick in the past year, with 720 in Manchester and 601 in the West Midlands. A total of 723 officers in Police Scotland were affected. The lowest totals were in Wiltshire and Durham, with 70 officers each off in the past year, and the City of London Police, which had just 16 of its 670 officers off sick with stress.

Dorset, Essex and Nottinghamshire Police did not respond to the Freedom of Information request.

Ché Donald, vice-chairman of Police Federation of England Wales, said officers were “broken”.

“If you don’t reduce the strain that officers are under, even with the best occupational health in the world, all you are going to have is a steady stream of officers wanting to access that service,” he said.

One officer, who has been with the Met Police for more than 10 years, said officers felt they had “no support”, and added that “many of us are out there by ourselves – the days of two bobbies strolling down the street is long gone.

“We are dealing with an increase in crime at the same time as officer numbers the and are cut and the strain on officers is sometimes overwhelming.”

Martin Lally, the Police Federation’s health and safety lead at Greater Manchester Police – which saw the number of officers off sick with stress rise 22 per cent in the past year, said: “Our officers are under pressure every single day and the unfortunate truth and result of this is that officers’ wellness and their mental health is being affected.

“Not only do they need to deal with increased demand but they also have to face the possibility every single day that they may have to attend an extremely traumatic event, something that we have been no stranger to in Greater Manchester in these recent times.”

Andy Rhodes, Lancashire’s Chief Constable, who also sits on the National Police Chiefs Council, agreed more needed to be done.

“It is high trauma occupation; police officers have to deal with high emotional labour. But trauma is only a problem if it goes unprocessed,” he said.

Mr Rhodes added that treating stress needed to be thought of in the same way that treatment was required when a person had “a bad knee”.

“The earlier we can support people to come forward, the better it will be for them. We don’t want it to end in crisis.”