WARNING: This article discusses suicide, depression, PTSD and violence, which some readers may find distressing.
“People don’t call the police when something good happens; instead, you’re dealing with the worst day of people’s lives, every day.”
These are the words from an anonymous Met police officer reflecting on the unique level of trauma he is exposed to.
Information released by The College of Policing revealed that the average person will experience three to four traumatic events in their lifetime, but for a police officer, this is estimated to be between 400 and 600 events.
The police officer told the SW Londoner: “We go to stabbings daily, we go to rapes, we go to burglaries – where someone’s entire life has been taken from them, where they feel vulnerable and scared.
“We have to sit with them, safeguard them in hospital beds, we have to go to their loved ones – whether it be their wives, their husbands, their grandparents, their spouses, their kids and tell them their loved ones are dead.”
These are the day-to-day expectations of the job, and officers return to the station to do it all over again, but what happens to a person who spends every day absorbing trauma?
“We go home with our trauma, we sleep with our trauma, we eat with our trauma, we wash with our trauma, we wake up with trauma,” an anonymous police officer said.
For many officers, this compassion doesn’t disappear overnight, but gradually erodes by the daily exposure to suffering.
This is the reality of compassion fatigue – a detached state felt when an individual routinely deals with distressed individuals and is often referred to as the ‘cost of caring’, which has become a silent epidemic across emergency services.
In conversation with an anonymous Met police officer, he explained his own experience with compassion fatigue:
“I would describe it as feeling deflated, unmotivated and a range of other emotions, but mostly anger at the people around you and the stuff you have to deal with.”
This reveals one of the most uncomfortable aspects of compassion fatigue – it doesn’t always look like sadness, but cynicism and futility.
He attributes this “anger” in part to going to repeated time-wasting calls and the day-to-day physical and verbal abuse they experience.
“Specifically, when we go to jobs with members of the public that have neighbourhood issues -it’s time-wasting, calling about such trivial problems, and it’s become 70% of the job, and you think to yourself in those moments, why can’t people just get along?”
After a decade of financial cuts under successive Conservative governments, police forces’ resources are still recovering as resources continue to be stretched and frontline teams operate under extreme pressure.
These frustrations exist alongside the most traumatic parts of the job:
Having attended post-natal suicides, active stabbings, and serious road traffic collisions in the same day, you experience spitting and verbal and physical abuse from the public.
“This has become a regular part of policing; there is no respect for us, people just dont care about the police anymore”
But these experiences of abuse are part of a wider backdrop of declining trust between the police and the communities they serve.
The emotional strain of dealing with traumatic situations is compounded by everyday factors: exhausted resources, time-wasting that diverts from those in crisis, public abuse and scrutiny..
“You can’t show that to people when you go to those jobs. You have to be friendly, optimistic, and bubbly. You have to be serious, professional and treat them with respect, because they are still human beings.” An anonymous police officer said.
Behind that professionalism, however, this officer described a culture in which showing vulnerability can carry its own risks.
“With each other, we don’t want to show our colleagues that we’re broken, because then our colleagues will show that they’re broken – and then the whole system breaks.”
“We are staying alive and staying optimistic for ourselves, but also our colleagues too.”
The result is a profession in which people may be struggling without appearing to be.
But this silence is matters, in the financial year 2023-2024, 14,508 police officers signed off with poor mental health due to stress, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder.
The figure offers only a proportion of the problem, with many officers suffering in silence while continuing to work, contributing to rising suicide rates in policing.
As the anonymous officer put it: “Many have it, but only a small percentage have it.”
“Why do you think the martial status in the police force is so low, unless you’re dating someone else in a line of emergency services?”
“They don’t understand it; they dont get why you have to sit in your car for an hour after work to decompress.”
In response to growing pressures facing its workforce, the Met is developing a 2026–28 health and wellbeing strategy prioritising earlier mental-health intervention, regular wellbeing checks, improved trauma support and fatigue management.
Chief business services officer, Clare Davies, emphasised at the London Policing Board of Culture and Committee at the beginning of this year, highlighting the levels of trauma exposure within policing and the link between workforce wellbeing and service quality to London’s communities.
‘Compassion fatigue’ is a silent epidemic that not only affects Met police but also emergency workers across the country.
As the pressures facing those working on the frontline continue, the conversation around their mental health needs to continue too.
If you have been affected by anything in this article or are concerned for anyone please contact the Samaritans Helpline on 116 123 or speak to someone online.
Featured image credit: Molly Finlay
