NEARLY 8,500 officers in the UK were signed off due to stress, depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the past year, 171 of whom were South Yorkshire Police officers.<\/p>\n
The figures were revealed by a Freedom of Information request by Police Oracle<\/em>. The same number of South Yorkshire Police officers were signed off last year.<\/p>\n South Yorkshire Police Federation Chair Steve Kent said he was not surprised by the high figures, especially after a particularly demanding year, and that more needed to be done to help officers dealing with stress and trauma.<\/p>\n Steve said: \u201cThere\u2019s no two ways about it, these figures are too high. Sadly, I\u2019m not surprised. The nature of the job is that officers are going to be coming across stressful situations, and the effects of dealing with incidents like that will take its toll.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is why we need wider-reaching, centralised processes to help officers. We\u2019re already pushed for officers to have a mandatory one-hour chat with somebody every year \u2013 especially frontline officers who are out there dealing with trauma and victims.\u201d<\/p>\n There was a possible light at the end of the tunnel, Steve said, as the force was funding more services and a new intake of officers was coming through.<\/p>\n He said: \u201cLast year and the year before that we had challenging times, with a lot of demand. The force is putting things in place to try to deal with this, including commitments to help with our occupational health department to make sure that gets increased funding, so that is welcome. We can\u2019t take our foot off the pedal until we start seeing those numbers coming right down.<\/p>\n \u201cWith the increased staffing and hopefully those staff now bedding in, potentially there is a bit of light at the end of the tunnel that officers are going to be able to share out the demand.\u201d<\/p>\n Steve urged officers who were struggling to seek help, through either the force or the Federation.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n