Dealing with the stress police face on the job

GIVEN that police officers are also human, how do they survive the trauma some of them suffer on the job?

The provincial commander of the SAPS employee health and wellness division, Jabu Mthembu, said the police were doing all they could to help officers and their families deal with trauma and depression.

Jabu said his unit had four components: social work, psychology, spiritual and quality of worklife services.

Though based in Durban, these catered for members throughout the province.

“We work as a team offering a service to the members and their immediate families. Services can be reactive or proactive – reactive when a policeman or family member approaches us on any issue, such as substance abuse or a family problem.

“Depending on the issue, we then determine who would be best to attend to it.

“Proactive refers to programmes we offer. We have life skills, stress management, personal financial management, suicide prevention and trauma management programmes. It depends on what problems we are picking up,” said Jabu.

Jabu said the killing of police officers had a traumatic impact on colleagues.

“They wake up to go to work and never know what to expect. The worst is to see colleagues being killed. The danger of the job then hits home.

“I must say members do seek help. We also get a lot of calls from spouses when they have issues with children or notice behavioural changes in a loved one. They are also our responsibility,” she said.

Counselling

The provincial head of the psychological service, Riana Botha, said counselling could last days or months, depending on the problem.

“Police are normal people who have feelings like everyone else. They put their lives at risk. It is normal for them to be stressed and things do affect them. I always say you have to be dead not to be affected by trauma. We do trauma counselling in groups or individually, but it has to be done within 72 hours of an incident.

“It works well in a group because they share the same experience. It makes people feel better realising they are not alone. We really encourage members to use our services,” said Botha.