Officers Taking More Sick Days Due To Mental Ill Health

Officers are taking more sick days due to mental ill health, which is exacerbated by a lack of resource and support from managers, Hampshire Police Federation has said.

A recent article in The Times reported that, last year, 39% of sick days taken by police officers nationally were due to mental ill health – up from 33% in 2020. This is significantly higher than other public-sector workers such as midwives, ambulance staff and doctors.

Hampshire Police Federation Chair Zoë Wakefield said there were several factors that were making mental health issues worse for police officers.

She said: “For one, it’s a consequence of all the cuts to policing and the low number of officers we have. Say, for example, that there’s 10 traumatic incidents a week in one area. Before, when we might have had 20 officers covering that area, only 50% of them were going to a traumatic incident. But because numbers have been cut so drastically, a lot of these teams have only five officers, so those officers are now going to two traumatic incidents a week each. That definitely has an impact.

“In Hampshire, we’re still not back to the numbers we had in 2010. We’re still playing catch-up. Bearing in mind that our numbers should be significantly higher than they were in 2010.

“Also, officers’ workloads are far too high. They regularly have to work overtime, so they are exhausted.They’re going to too many traumatic incidents and they don’t get the time to decompress from those incidents, they’re just sent from one to the next one.

“The quality of support from line management is also an issue. In Hampshire, the force is only now investing in proper training for line managers, in how to look after people. I’ve seen too many examples where officers have been poorly treated by line management, that has compounded their mental health and made the whole situation so much worse, and caused them to be off sick longer than if they’d had proper support and management from their line manager.

“Our Federation office gets notified by the force when officers are due to drop to half pay because they’ve been off sick for six months. We contact every single one of them, and quite a few say: ‘I’ve not had any contact from my line manager. I’ve been off sick for six months. Nobody’s spoken to me, nobody’s offered me any support’.”

Zoë encouraged any officers who were struggling with their mental health to get in touch with the Federation for support.

She said: “We can speak to your line managers, we can help ensure that they follow the process correctly. We can speak to the bigger managers if you need a change of role. Whatever you need to get you back to work, we can help with that.”