Officers Should Have Regular Mental Health Check-Ups

THE high number of police officers are fatigued and showing signs of PTSD is down to the “drip-drip effect” of policing, according to South Yorkshire Police Federation.

New figures from Oscar Kilo show 45% of officers are getting less than six hours of sleep a night – with 67% of officers and 50% of staff reporting PTSD symptoms.

The only cure is getting policing back up to the levels it was before austerity and taking some of the pressure off over-worked officers, said Steve Kent, South Yorkshire Police Federation Chairman.

He said: “It’s a drip-drip effect, and this is what policing does. It can only be helped by getting our resources back up – we need national Government investment in policing welfare across the board.

“That includes regular check-ups, even if it’s quarterly, three times a year or bi-annual.

“They need to be actual one-to-one check-ups with cops to see if they can spot the signs and stuff early on because we tend to only hear about cops that have already broken.

“We must stop getting to that point.

“Stuff like lack of sleep and the constant drip-effect of stress, it’s just going to cause a nasty bottleneck of all those kinds of issues.”