Source document: https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/1697645019595.pdf (Australia)
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I am an ex NSW police ofﬁcer.

I was a Detective Senior Constable working the majority of my career in the Child Abuse Squad.

Sadly I was discharged HOD, Hurt On Duty, having been diagnosed with Chronic PTSD, Major Depression and Generalised Anxiety Disorder.

I have been unable to work since being discharged and have ongoing mental health issues.

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I would like to address a number of the terms of reference by relating my own experience and views, and commenting on what changes I believe are necessary to address the high rate of mental health conditions in police ofﬁcers.!

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The majority of police develop mental health conditions that are considered chronic.

It is labelled chronic as opposed to acute, due to the long standing nature of the condition.!

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The nature of policing, being the constant and sustained exposure to life threatening situations, and physically and emotionally traumatic events, means that conditions like PTSD, depression, and anxiety build up in an individual ofﬁcer over time.

It is this time factor, plus the type of critical incident and the amount of exposure, that leads to an ofﬁcer becoming vulnerable to developing a mental health condition.

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I will detail my career to highlight how a mental health condition can develop over time.

I will also make suggestions of what could of prevented my condition becoming chronic and thus far being more treatable than it is, having developed to a chronic condition.!

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CAREER BACKGROUND!

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The ﬁrst few years of my career were spent in general duties and domestic violence.
Although I was exposed to a range of serious incidents and events through this time, I was not offered any psychological treatment or debrieﬁng by management.

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I was not aware I had any signs or symptoms of developing a mental health condition during that time.

In saying that, my ﬁrst ﬂashback was from an incident I witnessed just two years into the job.

Clearly the bad incidents were starting to build up from very early on.

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The high rates of mental health conditions experienced by first responders, emergency service workers and volunteersSubmission 48 !

I then joined the Child Abuse Squad where I was constantly exposed to very serious incidents of child sexual assault, physical abuse, severe neglect and child pornography.

The squad was chronically understaffed, the workload was extremely high, with many hours of overtime and call outs.

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There was many times where junior police, myself included, were left to manage the unit with very little support from higher managers.

It was also very difﬁcult to go on leave for lengths of time which would allow for a proper psychological break.

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It was a very poor working environment due to the nature of the work I was doing, the lack of effective management and the culture of ‘suck it up’ and get on with it.
Not surprisingly after a few years in the squad I began to display symptoms of anxiety which I thought was just work stress.

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The child abuse squad was one where it was well known to managers that there was a high risk of psychological injury.

There had been suicides in the squad and many ofﬁcers leaving due to developing mental health conditions.

Due to this, the ofﬁcers were mandated to attend a psychologist every three months, they were called Wellchecks.

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I attend a psychologist for over seven years approximately every three months.

I told the psychologists every symptom I was experiencing.

At no time did any of these psychologists tell me I was developing a chronic mental health condition.

If they had, I would have addressed it.

Instead I was told I was ‘stressed’ and given advice to take holidays or do meditation.

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Clearly the Wellcheck programme does not work.


If it had worked, I should have been ﬂagged as developing a mental health condition and treated accordingly.

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After being in the squad for four years, I had my ﬁrst anxiety attack at work.

I spoke to a EAP psychologist at the time, management were informed and I went to a G.P.

A week later I returned to work doing the same duties.

The anxiety attack was treated as a bit of a joke and minimised by management.
Because of this attitude I carried on as normal and did not take it seriously.

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The high rates of mental health conditions experienced by first responders, emergency service workers and volunteersSubmission 48 During this time, I applied for a number of secondments to other areas of the police to allow myself to have a break from child abuse investigations.

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Although the squad had a policy that stated ofﬁcers must have a secondment every three years, my applications for secondment were continually declined due to staff shortages.

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I tried to manage my stress levels by lifestyle changes but as the years went by my physiological symptoms just increased.

I can only see this in hindsight, at the time I was being told by psychologists that it was only stress, not that I was developing a chronic mental health condition.

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I was very open to management about my own personal stress levels as well as others in the ofﬁces I worked.

The last location I worked in was remote to headquarters which meant very little support.

There was minimal staff and an ever increasing amount of work.

The other ofﬁcers were also experiencing similar symptoms that I was, thus it was difﬁcult for any of us to recognise how serious our conditions were becoming.

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Three months prior to leaving work, I attended a EAP psychologist who told me she believed I had PTSD.

I was shocked as I knew this was a serious mental health condition.

I was also surprised as this was the ﬁrst time a psychologist had mentioned PTSD over the seven years I had been seeing them.

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I returned to work and told management what the EAP psychologist had said.

I again asked for staff relief so I could take some annual leave to address the issue.
Weeks went by with no intervention by management and I continued investigating child abuse.

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My mental health was deteriorating fast and this was very obvious at work.

I was not given any options by management in terms of either going on leave, changing my duties or going to see the Police Medical Ofﬁcer.

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At this time I felt I had no options and began to have suicide ideation.

Eventually due to having repetitive strong suicide ideation and having no other option, I was forced to leave work.
I was very close to being another police suicide statistic.

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By this time, my mental health condition had deteriorated to Chronic PTSD, Major Depression and Generalised Anxiety Disorder.

Sadly I was unable to recover and return to the job I loved.

I have been unable to work since I left the police and my life has been severely impacted by my condition.!

The high rates of mental health conditions experienced by first responders, emergency service workers and volunteersSubmission 48 !

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POLICE CULTURE!

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Police culture had a very big impact on why I felt I could not leave the police earlier, before I had a complete breakdown.The very strong culture of policing where you are required to suppress how you feel and just get on it with it, meant I often had to dismiss how I was feeling.

I also knew I would be considered weak if I left because I could not handle being a police ofﬁcer.!

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It is often said that policing is a contact sport and you have to be tough to do it.
The idea of me not being tough enough to do my duties was agonising.

It was so distressing that I began to think of suiciding as an option rather than leaving and being seen as ‘weak’.

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Other aspects of the culture also impact on making a decision to leave.

In policing there is a ‘us and them’ mentality, in that police are on one team and the rest of society is on the other.

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Once this has been ingrained in you the feeling of letting the side down if you leave, is very strong.
Due to the nature of the work, you develop very strong bonds with your work colleagues and want to remain loyal to them and not let the side down.!

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Another reason is that I took the oath I made at graduation to serve and protect the community very seriously.

To walk ‘off the point’ and leave my post went against this oath.

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For a long time I felt I could not choose to go and was waiting for management to step in and give me options.
Being a rank structured organisation it is very easy to feel powerless against management and feel like you have no control to change the situation.!

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I was also being told by the psychologist who are supposedly experts in mental health , that how I was feeling was work stress, not that I was developing a serious mental health condition.!

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The high rates of mental health conditions experienced by first responders, emergency service workers and volunteersSubmission 48 !

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Management Practices !

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As my psychological health decreased I was unable to make rational decisions.

I needed management to take control and get me the help I needed.

Sadly this did not occur and I was left with no option but to leave.

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As can be seen, my mental health condition developed over a number of years.

There was at least four years where management could have actually managed me and intervened, long before i suffered such a severe breakdown.!

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I believe I could have recovered enough to continue my policing career if a proactive treatment programme was initiated at the time of the ﬁrst anxiety attack.

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This ﬁrst anxiety attack has been highlighted by psychiatrist and insurance companies as the beginning of my mental health issues.

This occurred four years prior to me leaving work.

In that time management did absolutely nothing to elevate the working conditions or intervene in what was my clearly deteriorating mental health condition.
Management sat on their hands and waited for me to ‘fall off the perch’.

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Unfortunately I was not the only casualty in my squad.

A third of the squad was also off work at the time I left.

This shows that there was systemic management failure to adequately care for their staff despite being well aware of the risk to ofﬁcers of developing mental health conditions.!

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Given the amount of money that was put into training me over the years, I ﬁnd it incredible that management could allow an asset to be wasted in such a manner.!

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Taking the personal out of things and just looking at asset management, the amount of money that was wasted is shameful.

The initial cost of training me as a police ofﬁcer, along with detective training and negotiator training amongst others would have been very high.

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Added to this is the cost of workers compensation once I left work as well as the cost of the insurance policy I was under.

This shows very poor management practice on a purely economic perspective.

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The high rates of mental health conditions experienced by first responders, emergency service workers and volunteersSubmission 48 !

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SUGGESTIONS!

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SUGGESTIONS!

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It is not good enough for police forces to throw their hands in the air and say they have no control over ofﬁcers developing mental health conditions.

As can be seen in my case, their was ample opportunity for management to intervene and decrease the risk of me developing a mental health issue.

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Risk management practices and early intervention is the key to keeping police at work and reducing the cost of mental health on state and federal governments.

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The NSW police well check programme does not work.

This programme is a complete waste of money.

It is no more than a ‘tick and ﬂick’ by the NSW police.

It is completely ineffective and in my experience should not be relied upon to gauge a persons mental health at all.

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If police want to reduce the number of ofﬁcers suffering psychological injuries they need to be more proactive.

Police need to be committed to implementing early intervention and risk management programmes.
These programmes would allow for proactive intervention when an individual began to experience signs and symptoms of mental health issues.

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Risk management practices and the creation of a Risk Matrix would be able to monitor an individuals exposure to serious incidents, length of time in high risk areas, and levels of workload, and any other area identiﬁed that contributes to risk of harm.

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As chronic mental health conditions creep up over time, the individual is often not aware of what is happening.

A risk matrix would be able to red ﬂag an ofﬁcer as being at risk.

Mandatory early intervention programmes could be initiated to help the ofﬁcers ﬁrstly see that they are at risk, educate them about signs and symptoms and develop strategies to reduce the risk.

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As can be seen from my career, if risk management practices were in place, I would have been red ﬂagged prior to the anxiety attack given the seriously traumatic incidents I was investigating, the length of time in a high risk squad and high level of my work load.

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The high rates of mental health conditions experienced by first responders, emergency service workers and volunteersSubmission 48 !

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Police will always be exposed to traumatic and life threatening incidents, and thus be at risk of developing mental health conditions.

Early intervention and effective management practices is the key to reducing the number of police developing life long mental health conditions.

Reducing the numbers and keeping experienced police at work will beneﬁt not only the individual but also the community on many levels.

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Police can and must do better in their management of human resources.
Better management practices will not only save money, it will save lives.

Current police and ex police suicides are preventable.

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If police management cared for their injured ofﬁcers the way police ofﬁcers care for the community, their would be less suicides and more ofﬁcers being able to recover and return to work.

The lack of care when you become unwell is very hurtful and degrading.

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The current NSW police commissioner has stated that there is a need to recruit more resilient ofﬁcers.
I ﬁnd this comment offensive and naive.

It is puts the responsibility for the development of a mental health condition on the individual rather than their experiences as a police ofﬁcer.

It reenforces the culture of ofﬁcers must be ‘weak’ or defective in some way if they develop mental health issues.

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Education of police management right from the very top is required urgently.

Clearly police management do not have a good understanding of the causes of mental health conditions in ofﬁcers.
It is an urgent issue as only recently sadly their was another current police ofﬁcer suicide.

How can management make the necessary changes if they have little understanding or acknowledgement of the causes.

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I was well aware when I joined the police that I would see some terrible things.

What I didn’t realise is that I would be so badly managed when these things began to effect my mental health.
Police management can do better and they must if they wish to reduce the cost of mental health on the individual as well as the community.

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The high rates of mental health conditions experienced by first responders, emergency service workers and volunteersSubmission 48 !

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The high rates of mental health conditions experienced by first responders, emergency service workers and volunteersSubmission 48