Mental health support needed for almost 90% of emergency service staff
It's claimed people working for the emergency services are being pushed to the limit - and desperately need help.
A union claims people working for our region's emergency services could be putting their mental health seriously at risk by not asking for help.
It's as research shows 87.57% of personnel said they had experienced stress and poor mental health whilst working for Blue Light services.
Excessive workload, pressure from management, long hours and trauma are identified as triggers in the Ambulance Service.
Joel Byers is Branch Secreatery for Unison and Staff Secretary for the North East Ambulance Service.
“It’s been this culture of, I can cope with anything. I think people have expected people to do that, it’s their job. So, on a day to day basis they see things people won’t see, deal with things that people couldn’t deal with and they’ve just got on with it.
“Certainly their family life is affected, I think worst case scenario and hopefully it doesn’t happen but people could be driven to take their own life or something like that. Nobody wants it to get to that.
“I don’t think we’ll ever completely get rid of it because of the nature of the job, you’re always going to see something that might just click something in your head, its how’s we deal with that and how we get them to come forward or we spot the signs of it so that we get early intervention.”
Emergency services personnel are more likely to experience a mental health problem than the general workforce, but you are less likely to take time of work as a result.
Staff and volunteers work hard to prevent mental health problems affecting performance at work, but this can come at a large personal cost, impacting relationships and health.
71% of Blue Light personnel think that their organisation does not encourage them to talk about mental health - this is almost twice as negative as the general workforce population
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