Service must improve ‘piecemeal’ approach to mental health
MORE must be done to improve the piecemeal approach to officers’ mental health across the country, the Police Dependants’ Trust has said.
Officers experiencing symptoms of stress, anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder receive vastly different treatment depending on their force, Gill Scott-Moore has said.
Ms Scott-Moore, the Trust’s CEO, was speaking after it emerged that officers are experiencing 14% more mental illness this year compared with last.
She asked: “Why is it that PTSD in some forces will result in an injury retirement, in others a resignation and in the worst cases prosecution? It shouldn’t matter which force you are in or where you live; you should be entitled to similar mental health care.
“We have seemingly different approaches to supporting those with poor mental health in every force and, in larger forces, different approaches in different commands.
“In some forces, officers will be kept on full pay, whilst in others we pay for their food because they have been cut to nil. Or, when all the specialist medical opinion is that an officer should be medically retired, the application is turned down, sometimes by the SMP, on other occasions against their advice too. I simply don’t understand.”
The Police Dependants’ Trust helped one officer who would have had less than £5,600 a year to live on without its financial assistance.
The Trust has also carried out extensive research into the needs of injured police officers – due to be published in November – and will be making £3 million available to support mental health and wellbeing initiatives in forces.
Ms Scott-Moore added: “More than once has a highly vulnerable officer been admitted to a mental health unit and then been discharged early when other patients have become aware they are a police officer. Should Public Health undertake a Health Needs Assessment for the police service in the same way they do for military veterans? I think they should.”
Writing in Policing Insight magazine, Ms Scott-Moore added: “There has to be a better way. I don’t know that it is yet but I’m determined to help find it.”