Rising absences, patchy records: Investigating PTSD in the UK police

A CGTN investigation has found that work absences due to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among UK police officers rose by almost 94 percent between 2020 and 2024 – despite officer numbers increasing by just over 8 percent in the same period. Overall mental-health absences rose by almost 95 percent.

Ahead of World Mental Health Day, we sent Freedom of Information requests to every police force in the United Kingdom and spoke to current and former officers to understand the scale of PTSD – a condition caused by exposure to traumatic events. 

What was uncovered was worrying: despite widespread recognition of the trauma officers face, forces' PTSD records are patchy, support is inconsistent, and officers say there is a culture of silence.

That inconsistency is, in part, built into the system. In England and Wales, each force has operational independence under its Chief Constable, but is overseen by a locally elected Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC). 

PCCs set budgets and strategic priorities – allocating central government grants and council tax precept – meaning mental-health support provision can vary widely between forces.

Outside of England and Wales, the structure is different: Scotland is policed by a single national force, Police Scotland, accountable to the Scottish Police Authority, while in Northern Ireland, the Policing Board supervises the PSNI.

When we asked UK police forces how many of their officers had taken sick leave for PTSD, 33 percent could not provide any data; some admitted PTSD is not recorded as a sickness category. Those that did track it recorded just over 2,000 officers over five years, with an increase of 94 percent over the period. 

However, work-day PTSD absences rose from just over 23,000 days in 2020 to almost 37,000 in 2024 – a 59 percent increase – and more than 178,000 policing days were missed during that time. That's the equivalent of 488 years of officer time.

'You would see everything at its most raw'

One serving officer with PTSD who asked to remain anonymous said new recruits "weren't prepped at all" for traumatic incidents, and that exposure builds relentlessly.

"In the course of one day you could go from a murder to a serious sexual assault one after the other with no time to decompress or process what you were dealing with," he says. "But you would see everything at its most raw."

He describes a culture of bravado which he says is commonplace in policing, leaving little room to process trauma.

"I think as an 18 or 19-year-old officer, even more so as a male officer, I think it was the whole male pride or bravado side of it," he recalls. "It was all action. It was all 'Go, go, go.'

"Let's say there's been a 999 call to a murder, and seeing a young lad who had been eviscerated. You know, from day one, you'll be seeing bad stuff, and then I think after a few years, it all builds up and builds up and builds up, and then it gets to the point where the dam can't hold anymore."

He admits turning to alcohol and describes hitting rock bottom: "I lost days of my life where I couldn't even tell you what happened… Having to force myself to get out of bed, sometimes even force myself to get up and use the toilet."

He believes almost everyone who stays in policing develops symptoms: "I would say all officers with more than a year or two in the job will have PTSD to some extent."

Two close friends, he said, died by suicide – "no build-up, no cry for help, no nothing."

'It all went in the cupboard' – Lee's story

For Lee Broadbent, who has spent nearly two decades in policing, the work has always swung between exhilaration and exhaustion.

"It can be incredible – you know, those moments where you've saved somebody, pulled someone back from a bridge, or you've locked up a violent offender and taken them off the street," he says. "But you never really get time to decompress because the next job might not go to plan."

One of the incidents that changed how he saw the job came in 2009 – a domestic stabbing. He was among the first on scene.

"It was pitch black – a woman lying on the floor, a child upstairs screaming 'Mum.' We did CPR, rode with her in the ambulance, even into the theater."

Despite the intensity of what he'd just witnessed, there was no pause for reflection.

"Then it was protecting the evidence, debriefing with the CID team. Then you get a commendation – yeah, it's great, this is policing. But it didn't recognize the horrific incident that you dealt with. The impact… There was no talking about it."

Although dealing with the incident earned praise from senior officers, its psychological impact went unrecognized. Years later, the sound of a child's cry would take Broadbent straight back to the flat. 

Then later during the COVID pandemic, the feel of hand sanitizer reminded him of those horrific moments.

"There's a certain kind of oily feel to it….  And that really, really took me back," he says. "It was like that during lockdown – like I had blood on my hands."

Nightmares, flashbacks, and hyper-vigilance followed – and it got worse.

"The intrusive thoughts of suicide and suicidal ideation – they came really late," he says. "At points of loneliness, that's when you start thinking you're better off… I pictured the garage… It would be an easy way to do it."

He describes the years before that as a process of burying what he couldn't face.

"I was self-medicating with alcohol, drinking more than I should have been doing. I was angry all the time. I was taking it out on the wrong people, but it was part of that journey… It was a condition, it was a symptom to an underlying cause."

When he finally sought help, the difference between official and charitable support was stark.

"[His force's] Occupational Health [department] pretty much said it could be weeks, and the best thing to do was to ring [independent charity] Police Care UK, which I did," he says. 

"They immediately recognized that I was in crisis and within three days I was allocated a therapist and signed for 12 sessions of EMDR" – Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, a form of psychotherapy designed to treat PTSD. 

"It was heavy in itself, because you have to go through it scene by scene, by scene, by scene."

A culture of silence

Former officer Sam Smith, who founded the Green Ribbon Policing campaign after leaving due to his own battle with PTSD, poses a blunt question.

"Why would you want to join the police?" he asks. "The salary's average, the hours are terrible, no one cares about you and no one respects you."

Smith says chronic understaffing leaves "not enough police officers to be able to cope with the level of crime and the population growth."

Lee Broadbent agrees on the day-to-day reality.

"Everyone's so busy at the minute that nobody is actually looking out for the person next to them, because they're all concentrating on your unique workload," he says. "The idea of a police officer is you're there to fix people's problems - you're not there to talk about your own s**t."

Worse, Smith says that the culture around mental health had long discouraged honesty.

"When I first started suffering with anxiety, I went to my sergeant and said I was struggling a bit, and he said: 'Don't ever go to Occupational Health if it's mental health – only come to me.'"

Broadbent agrees that stories of colleagues reassigned after admitting their struggles "permeate across decades," breeding distrust.

Delays and limited support

What happens when officers ask for help? Data from the FOI requests shows that in 2024, the average wait to see a mental-health professional through a force's Occupational Health unit was 46 days. 

Depending on the force, that wait could stretch to 257 days – more than eight months. For officers living with nightmares, flashbacks, isolation, irritability and guilt, those delays matter.

Many forces point to their internal TRiM (Trauma Risk Management) process, which relies on colleagues volunteering to check on officers' welfare after they've attended a potentially traumatic incident. But Smith warned that all too often it can become a box-ticking exercise.

"You'll have a sergeant stand there in the parade room after a bad job and go, 'Right, anyone want a TRiM?' in front of 15 other people," he says. "Nobody's going to put their hand up in front of everyone and say, 'Yeah, me please.' Because you don't want to be seen as weak."

Broadbent is pragmatic about TRiM's strengths and limits.

"Peer-to-peer helps - a cop who 'gets it' can spot acute stress," he acknowledges. "But if referral routes take six weeks, you can be through two more traumatic jobs before help arrives."

Gary Hayes, a former British Transport Police officer who co-founded not-for-profit social enterprise PTSD999, agrees that follow-ups come too late:

"You'll revisit that individual 28 days later – how many more traumatic events have they been to in that period? It's an arse-covering exercise in my book."

Expert view: 'Disenfranchised distress' 

Professor Jo Clarke, a former forensic psychologist who works with police, describes a culture of "disenfranchised distress" – the reality that officers are distressed, but feel they aren't allowed to be. Unprocessed memories "get shoved in a cupboard," she says, until the door bursts and "everything falls out."

She believes forces should approach PTSD as they would any officer receiving a physical attack.

"If somebody's stabbed, we wouldn't expect them to go back out to work the next day, would we?" she asks. "But if somebody's psychologically injured, we somehow think they should just crack on. It's the same thing - it's an injury."

Clarke wants an organizational cultural shift where seeking help is "absolutely understood and expected." 

However, what's missing, she says, is prevention: psycho-education for officers on how the brain responds to trauma so they can recognize the signs; the teaching of emotional-regulation skills; opportunities for regular decompression; supervisors trained to notice and ask "No, how are you really?"

PTSD and suicide 

Experts say PTSD significantly heightens suicide risk, yet we found that more than half of UK forces do not record officer suicides. 

"I can't believe we don't record in-service suicides," says Professor Jo Clarke. "I find that more frightening than the figures themselves – because ignorance is bliss, isn't it?"

In March 2025, the Police Federation launched the STEP (Suicide Trauma Education Prevention) campaign to highlight the cumulative harm of attending suicides and advocate for mandatory post-incident support. The Federation argues that officers who repeatedly attend suicides could be especially vulnerable to mental health risks.

Hayes, who once stood on a railway platform contemplating suicide, says:

"Everyone looks at you and thinks you're good – but some are so broken inside… I thought everyone would be better off without me. Thankfully, I never went through with it."

His frustration lies in what he sees as a failure of leadership and care.

"When you go to a colleague's funeral, you hear, 'How did they slip under the radar?' The answer is because you didn't care – you're not putting enough back into welfare to look out for this stuff."

Checks, standards, and accountability 

Our investigation found that although forces did increase spending on mental-health provision by 66 percent from 2020 to 2024, PTSD absences nearly doubled in that time – so clearly more needs to be done.

Smith believes that reform should mirror the physical checks officers already face.

"We have no accountability. Once that officer is in, they can be exposed to all this trauma and stuff and we're never gonna check if they're okay," he says. 

"I believe we need a standard. I believe every year officers should have a psychological assessment check."

He also argues that TRiM should be used "properly where every single traumatic incident that is attended need[s] to be properly TRiMmed."

Broadbent is blunt about responsibility and cost.

"Charities are filling gaps forces should own," he says. "If I'd been stabbed, the wraparound would appear. Psychological injury should be treated the same. Signposting to under-resourced pathways isn't a strategy."

Professor Clarke agrees UK police forces need consistent national standards:

"At the moment, it's completely inconsistent. Some forces are doing great work and others barely anything at all," she says. "We need a proper national framework – something that sets out what good looks like and makes sure every officer has access to the same level of support, no matter where they serve."

Such a support network might encourage more people to join the police. Asked what he'd tell his 14-year-old self who dreamed of joining, Broadbent pauses.

"I'm not sure I'd recommend it now," he says. "I've worked with outstanding people – but unless we fix culture, support and staffing, the job will keep breaking good cops."

Official response and reform 

The National Police Chiefs' Council told CGTN Europe that cultural change is underway but acknowledged further work is needed.

"Police officers and many police staff work in an environment which is both mentally and physically demanding, with regular exposure to traumatic incidents and an ever-present risk to their own safety," said Andy Rhodes, Service Director for the National Police Wellbeing Service.

"Whilst the culture is changing, there is still work to do in terms of building trust and confidence to speak up early whilst also ensuring there is sufficient investment made into health and wellbeing."

Rhodes said policing has appointed a Chief Medical Officer, launched a national suicide action plan, commissioned postvention work with [emotional support charity] The Samaritans, and introduced "the first ever fully independent and confidential mental-health crisis line" in July 2025.

He acknowledged a gap in recording in-service suicides, to be addressed in 2026 alongside wider adoption of suicide-prevention training, particularly for line managers.

"Every suicide of a colleague generates a huge sense of sadness and loss… We're determined to do as much as we possibly can so our people feel confident to reach out early to get help."

CGTN also reached out to the Home Office and the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners but they did not provide a response.

As Britain marks World Mental Health Day, the data – and the testimonies – reveal a workforce still carrying trauma while providing a critical service. Every day they protect the public from violence, tragedy and loss.

The question now is: What will be done to protect them?