People still aren't talking about mental health, says Federation

10 October 2018

People still aren’t talking about mental health and it’s affecting people, says Surrey Police Federation Chair Mel Warnes.

Recent figures have shown that nationally over the past 6 year’s the number of officers taking time off for mental health related illnesses has risen by 55%.

The reality of this in Surrey is that in the past year alone 101 officers have taken time off with stress, anxiety, depression and PTSD related illness.

Surrey Federation Chair, Mel Warnes says she worries that this number could be much higher.

She said: “This is just 101 officers that were willing to say that’s why they were off sick. I’d imagine that those numbers are higher than 101 because there are some people that still feel they can’t talk about depression or anxiety or mental health in general.

“There’s becoming more and more stress within the job.

“Police officers go to some really horrific incidents and that isn’t just a one-off. They go into them day in, day out.  And it will take its toll on some officers.

“That’s one unfortunate side-effect of the job. Some officers deal with things better than others but we’ve still got officers that deal with stress very, very well and they are starting to break. This issue is affecting an awful lot of people.

“We’ve got people breaking that we think are so strong, sometimes including me.”

Mel said there needs to be much more focus from the force on wellbeing of officers, including the understanding that there is no quick fix for this.

She continued: “The force are saying that they’re doing more for officers around mental health but that isn’t always visible to officers.

“When I’m talking to officers about what they see is happening around wellbeing in general, they’re not feeling a massive impact from the force.

“We know we need numbers in operational policing to keep the pressure down but people are breaking and we need to help them get back to a point where they can come back to work.

“With mental health that’s not always quickly, yet there still seems to be a drive to get officers back to work as soon as possible. There is no quick fix or overnight treatment that can be done with officers that are suffering with metal health illness.

“There needs to be much more focus on wellbeing of officers, what is the cause of the issue, and not rushing officers back to operational policing.”