Poor working conditions exacerbate PTSD issues for police – study

Many UK police officers suffer from trauma-related mental health disorders, and this is exacerbated by poor working conditions such as a lack of time and support, according to research.

A previous study led by Cambridge University suggested that close to one in five officers have symptoms consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or complex PTSD (C-PTSD).

The 2018 study analysed responses from 16,857 serving officers and operational staff.

In a further study, the same team of researchers explored links between working conditions and C-PTSD, looking at survey data provided by 12,248 serving police officers.

Officers who said they felt supported by colleagues, and had a sense of doing meaningful work, had around half the rates of a form of PTSD as the national average for policing staff.

Those behind the study say their findings suggest simple improvements to the working lives of police – such a scheduled time for support from peers and supervisors – could dramatically reduce the level of psychiatric problems in UK forces.

Trauma detailed by officers with probable levels of C-PTSD based on the survey screening included dealing with fatal car accidents, rapes, homicides, suicides – including of children – and drug overdoses.

Exposure to physical violence made little difference to rates of C-PTSD, nor did long working hours.

However, officers who described it as “very difficult” to take time away from the job for personal or family matters had C-PTSD rates more than 50% higher than the UK-wide average for police.

Those who described their relationship between work and personal life as “not fitting well at all”, some 15% of police officers in the study, had twice (24%) the average policing rates of C-PTSD.

One C-PTSD sufferer said “it is a given and accepted” that the job means exposure to trauma, and describes the occupational health team in their force as “brilliant” but few in number.

Police officers who described never having enough time to “get the job done” had almost double the rates of C-PTSD as the average across UK forces, 22% compared with 12%.

Officers who said they could never rely on the help and support of colleagues were most likely to suffer with C-PTSD, with over 43% displaying symptoms, but such claims were relatively rare.

By contrast, C-PTSD rates were just 7% among those who said they could always rely on colleagues, and just 6% among those who say they regularly get a feeling of a job well done, with researchers claiming that a sense of meaningful work may provide a “protective effect” mentally.

Prof Brendan Burchell, lead author from Cambridge’s Department of Sociology, said: “Our research shows that the debilitating psychological misery often caused by trauma exposure isn’t an inevitable part of the difficult job of policing, it is exacerbated by poor working conditions.”

The team also conducted analyses beyond individual officers to compare forces, revealing a strong link between “work intensity” – those forces with more officers reporting a lack of time to effectively police – and increased rates of C-PTSD.

Of 18 anonymised UK police forces, the one with the highest reported time constraints among officers had C-PTSD rates of 29%, well over double the average for the overall policing population.

Prof Burchell said: “Severe austerity cuts since 2010 leading to a marked reduction in police numbers without a decrease in the demands of the job inevitably creates more time pressure for remaining officers.

“Single-crewing, shift work and fewer resources mean that time for encouraging words between colleagues or space for officers to acknowledge their traumatic experiences are few and far between.”

One officer with probable C-PTSD described being “single crewed” at a rural location for a year, with the nearest support almost an hour away.

Another spoke of going from a shift team of five to working alone, adding: “My coping strategy of being around colleagues who had been to the same fatal accident or suicide was taken away from me.”

Cambridge co-author Dr Jessica Miller, who is also director of research for Police Care UK, the charity that funded the research, said: “The police forces reporting the best working conditions had much lower rates of PTSD.

“Modest investments to improve their working conditions could see significant reductions in psychological problems among police officers.”

The latest findings are published in the journal Policing.