Police officers took nearly half a million days off to battle mental health issues in 2021

The pandemic appeared to have taken a toll on the psyche of the police forces with officers taking a record number of days off last year citing mental health issues.

They took 497,154 days off in 2021 because of the reason and the figure was nine per cent higher than the 457,154 recorded in 2020, data accessed by The Telegraph through Freedom of Information (FoI) revealed.

The newspaper said 24 of the 37 police forces which responded to its FoI requests reported an increase in mental health problems among their officers.

With 4,781 sick days for mental ill health in 2021, Warwickshire Police led the figures with a 68 per cent jump over the previous year.

Former HM inspector of police Zoe Billingham said the figures suggested the pandemic led to a greater prevalence of mental ill health among the emergency services.

“Police and other front-line services kept us safe through the pandemic… The pandemic was a great unknown. People were really fearful of dying and coming into contact with the virus, and many people did,” she said.

“Mental health and other professions were there from the get-go on the front line and, with enforced lockdown, there is an awful lot of trauma that the country is dealing with now. There has been a doubling in referrals for children with mental health as a result of the lockdown period,” she told The Telegraph.

The Liberal Democrats said the government should provide greater mental health support to police officers to address the “mental health epidemic”.

The party’s home affairs spokesman Alistair Carmichael said the stresses of policing can take a heavy toll on the mental health of officers, leading in some cases to exhaustion and burnout.

“Years of under-resourcing under the Conservatives means the thin blue line is being stretched to breaking point,” Carmichael said and warned this could have a “catastrophic impact on the well-being of individual police officers.”