CASES of UK police officers and staff taking long-term sick leave for psychological reasons have risen by 35%.<\/p>\n
The figures, released under the Freedom of Information Act, show cases rose from 4,544 in 2010\/11 to 6,129 in 2014\/15.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere needs to be a greater understanding and greater acknowledgment by forces and some investment in occupational health,\u201d said Mark Smith, Chairman of Essex Police Federation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe also have to remember that the force aren\u2019t the primary health provider, the NHS are, so it needs to be an admittance that it\u2019s happening and I think they need to look and see what\u2019s causing it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that mental illness in society in younger people is on the rise anyway, so in policing we\u2019re probably replicating what\u2019s going on in society. But on top of that we\u2019ve got a stressful type of job which is probably making it worse, so we need to identify, I think, the causation factors to see if we can negate or control what\u2019s happening to officers.\u201d<\/p>\n
What would be Mr Smith\u2019s advice to any officers who are suffering from psychological illness?<\/p>\n
\u201cMy advice has got to be to seek professional help,\u201d he added. \u201cIf you think that you\u2019re not right, if you think you\u2019re getting stressed and maybe have any early signs of depression then get medical help.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd, of course, bring it to the notice of the force, because it might be that the things that are causing the issues might be able to be addressed very easily, but if we don\u2019t know what\u2019s causing it then we can\u2019t address what\u2019s happening.\u201d<\/p>\n
The BBC\u2019s 5 live Daily programme contacted 46 police forces across the UK, and 40 provided information.<\/p>\n
Data also showed the number of police employees on long-term sick leave \u2013 defined by forces as either 28 or 29 days or more \u2013 rose from 19,825 in 2010\/11 to 22,547 in 2014\/15.<\/p>\n
There was also a steady increase in overall long-term sick leave.<\/p>\n
Che Donald, of the Police Federation of England and Wales, said there had been \u201cunprecedented cuts to police officer numbers\u201d while demand on forces had not decreased.<\/p>\n
He said increased sickness \u2013 including for psychological reasons \u2013 was not surprising as officers often worked in \u201chighly stressful fast-moving environments\u201d and were exposed to \u201chorrific situations\u201d.<\/p>\n
More information for officers with concerns here http:\/\/www.polfed.org\/fedatwork\/Welfare_Support_Programme.aspx<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" CASES of UK police officers and staff taking long-term sick leave for psychological reasons have risen by 35%. The figures, released under the Freedom of Information Act, show cases rose\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2767,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2766"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2766"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2802,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2766\/revisions\/2802"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}