We Are Here To Help With Your Mental Health

SOUTH Yorkshire Police Federation says it is on hand to help officers who may be struggling with their mental health after worrying new figures show the impact it is having on officers across the country.

Official stats have revealed nearly 10,000 officers in England and Wales had to take time away from the frontline to deal with stress, anxiety and PTSD in the past year.

In South Yorkshire, 171 officers reported mental health symptoms, forcing them away from their duties.

Thankfully the stigma around talking about mental health in policing is starting to fall away, according to South Yorkshire Police Federation Chairman Steve Kent.

He said: “People are starting to come forward and talk with more confidence because of the things that we’re putting out there.

“We have got this underlying stress issue which is a major problem, but it’s more of an accepted subject for people to say, ‘actually I need to take a bit of time out’, whereas in the past cops might not have done that.

“I’m currently going through something called Street Skills, which means I’m pointing out our services and pointing out the things that we do to officers at their training days every three months or so.

“We offer counselling outside of the force, and we refer people to that, so there are help and options for officers.

“As a result, people do start coming to us and saying they think their mate on shift or a constable on their shift is struggling or a supervisor comes to us and tells us they’ve got somebody struggling that needs that bit of intervention.

“That’s when we try and step in as much as we can with the resources we’ve got.”

Alongside the Federation’s support, Steve says officers can access a force app to provide mental health support while they are out on the frontline.

He explained: “The force is extremely proactive about dealing with mental health.

“We’re still not perfect with it yet, we’ve got a lot of learning to do, but the force is committed to investing in it.

“We have an app called Back-Up Buddy, which is designed for officers to have on their phones which gives them guidance and tips and that kind of thing.”

Decades of cuts have made the job tougher, but Steve said he is hopeful getting more officers out on the beat will help ease the burden being placed on his colleagues.

He added: “Since the cuts we’ve seen the difficulty of the job increase. We’ve been almost at rock bottom over the last couple of years, and while things are picking up in that area we are still in a situation where we need to get a grip on mental health.

“I’m confident things have been put in place to do that slowly, and obviously we’ve got a role to play in that as the Federation, through the services we officer.

“It’s just until those numbers [of officers] are back in the force there’s still going to be an enormous strain on officers for the foreseeable future.”