EXCL Ministers urged to give police cash boost as mental health problems among officers soar
4 min read
Ministers have been urged to plough more resources into police budgets as it emerged the number of officers requiring treatment for mental health problems has soared.
Data uncovered by PoliticsHome found that until 2012, cancer was the most common reason for officers requiring medical help.
But that has now been surpassed by mental health complaints, which accounted for nearly 70% of cases in 2018.
Support provider RedArc, which provided the figures, said it expects to see 1,301 officers presenting with mental health concerns in 2019, compared to 834 last year, and 254 in 2010.
Officers' trade union the Police Federation and charity Police Care UK have told PoliticsHome psychological harm is at an “all-time-high”, and that cuts to staff and police budgets have created a “pressure cooker environment”.
Police Federation vice-chair Ché Donald said: “There’s no chance in hell that they have sufficient funds or resources currently to address this problem, there may be pockets of good practice but the national picture is bleak, extremely bleak…
“In the last eight years – no coincidence of when the coalition government came in – when you’ve got a service that’s delicate by nature of what it deals with on a day-to-day basis and then you starve it of the support network, the ability to offload some of the workloads…you start adding fatigue into it, pressure of the job…cancelled rest days.
“It all adds up into a perfect storm that’s just waiting to cause damage.”
Police Care UK’s Damian Chapman told PoliticsHome: “The psychological harm [to] police is at an all-time high and more and more colleagues are coming to us because they’re concerned for themselves or someone in their team or their unit for fear of attempting suicide.
“What we do know is anecdotally from people doing the job coming to us for assistance, the psychological impact and trauma of policing is becoming a more serious issue.
“We’ve had a rise in number of applications and requests for assistance based on psychological need rather than physical."
New research supported by Police Care UK and conducted by Cambridge University found that 90% of officers participating had been exposed to trauma, and that nearly one in five suffer with a form of post-traumatic stress disorder.
'NEGATIVE IMPACT'
Shadow Policing Minister Lou Haigh accused the Home Office of pushing responsibility for the problem onto police chiefs.
She said: "They need to have basic standards every force should adhere to on mental health training and awareness and provision.
“At the moment their attitude and approach is to push everything back down on to police and crime commissioners and chief constables and to wash their hands of any responsibility.
“That undoubtedly has had a massively negative impact on officers and staff and also on the service police are able to provide.”
'MORE RESOURCES'
Responding to the officers' concerns, policing minister Nick Hurd said he was “very concerned” over the mounting evidence and data on police wellbeing and that he understood the frustrations of forces demanding more cash.
"I’ve been very clear, very frank with everyone I completely accept that a major part of the stress on the system and the stress that people are feeling, is a result of the fact they work very hard, in very demanding circumstances," he said.
“There’s plenty of cops saying all you’ve got to do is put more money in the system…I understand that frustration and again we are responding to that.
“I completely accept and understand what the Federation were saying about the need for more resources and capacity in the system.
“I think between that and this agenda of mental health and stress, I absolutely understand that and accept that, my priority as a police minister is to get more resources into the system.”
Last month the Home Office pledged £7.5 million into a newly-launched National Police Wellbeing Service, a flagship project led by the College of Policing aiming to standardise mental health and physical support across the forces.
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