Fed Chair: Police officers are getting better equipped to deal with trauma

POLICE officers are facing hundreds of traumatic events every single year.

Steve Taylor, Chairman, said: “Officers are exposed to a lot of trauma as part of their day-to-day jobs, but they are also professional and increasingly having mature conversations around mental health, around identifying the triggers and identifying potential fatigue in our own mental health and what we can do about it.

“All of these things are really important and help equip us to deal with traumatic incidents better that we ever have done in the past. So, whilst we might run the chance to being exposed to more trauma, we are getting better in how we equip ourselves to deal with it, which is a good thing. There are no quick fixes, in my view. It’s a long piece of work, but we’re moving in the right direction, and I think that’s important.”

Steve was talking after the National Police Chief Council’s Welfare Lead Andy Rhodes said police officers face hundreds of traumatic events every single year. Mr Rhodes told the Police Superintendents’ Association in September that this had left one in five officers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

He said: “The survey of 18,000 staff found up to 20 per cent of our police have got PTSD or complex PTSD, and that is huge. Working excessive hours, there is an element of that in the job from time to time, but if it happens consistently and becomes the accepted norm that is a problem.”

More than 10,000 police officers have taken time off because of stress, depression or other mental health problems over the past year, the latest figures have shown.

The number has soared by 77% in four years, from 5,460 in the year to March 2014, and is now the highest in the history of the police service.