SENIOR leaders in policing need to move away from judging and blaming those in the service who suffer from mental health illnesses and start taking responsibility for the issue.<\/p>\n
That was the message from NPCC\u00a0Lead for Organisational Development and Wellbeing, Deputy Chief Constable Andy Rhodes, when he addressed Chief Superintendents and Superintendents at their Annual Conference.<\/p>\n
He told them that the health of police officers was not a \u201cpink and fluffy\u201d matter.<\/p>\n
DCC Rhodes said \u201cone of the big issues\u201d in 2017 in the service would be post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He said: \u201cOur understanding of PTSD, how it affects how we do our job, not just the negative aspects of it but how we can look at PTSD as something that, actually, is quite normal given what we expose a lot of our staff and ourselves to over the series of our service.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neil Bowles, Chairman of South Yorkshire Police Federation, added: \u201cForces\u2019 occupational health units have been set up but they do not have enough staff or resources to cope at the best of times, let alone when the going gets tough such as here in South Yorkshire.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe amount of officers that are off sick with stress has increased, and I have evidence that some musculoskeletal issues are indeed caused by stress.\u201d<\/p>\n
There has been a 14% increase over the last financial year in the number of UK police officers signed off work for mental health-related illnesses, including stress, anxiety, depression PTSD.<\/p>\n
A total of 8,632 officers were signed off work in the past year for these illnesses in 39 forces in England and Wales, Police Scotland, the PSNI and British Transport Police.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s around one in 17 police officers in the UK. And it is an increase of 14% from comparable forces for the 2014\/15 financial year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first thing is that this problem has always been there,\u201d DCC Rhodes told the Superintendents\u2019 Association Annual Conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is coming out more visibly now because there are less back office jobs, there are less places where people who weren\u2019t well used to go to do their work and see their police careers out.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are learning that some people think that wellbeing is still pink and fluffy and that\u2019s because, for them, they don\u2019t understand the severity of what we\u2019re talking about within wellbeing. The term itself is a little bit pink and fluffy, I prefer to use the word \u2018resilience\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think PTSD will sharpen our awareness of what wellbeing is about and early intervention, but in terms of what we\u2019ve learned over the last sort of couple of years, resilience, or people struggling with resilience has been managed away and not dealt with.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve defaulted to process rather than a conversation and we have engaged in a lot of things that on the surface looked like they\u2019re fixing the problem but in reality aren\u2019t. And there is a lot of money spent in the service that could be spent differently around more targeted early intervention approaches to our resilience.\u201d<\/p>\n
DCC Rhodes spoke of \u201cemployee assistance programmes\u201d that some forces outsource to support officers and staff. He said that many require a line manager to initiate the intervention.<\/p>\n
\u201cQuite often it might be the line manager who is part of the problem that\u2019s going on,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
DCC Rhodes concluded his session, titled \u201cCommand resilience and wellbeing\u201d, by stating that \u201cit\u2019s good to talk.\u201d<\/p>\n