The South African Police Service (SAPS) Employee Health and Wellness Component held a two-day Mental Health Summit for its employees at the Tshwane SAPS Academy in Pretoria.

The summit brought together Senior Managers and employees from operational units and police stations in and around Gauteng as well as key stakeholders such as Medical Aid Partners, Polmed and GEMS, colleagues within the Criminal Justice System (CJS), colleagues in the academic field, NGO’s with interest on Trauma Management and other government departments.

The Summit aimed at creating a platform for sharing best practices and increasing awareness around Mental Health Issues as well as to reduce mental health stigma through education, advocating for benefits for those members suffering from post-traumatic stress and other mental-ills.

On a daily basis, employees of the SAPS especially those in the operational environment experience work-related stress that can range from responding to extremely traumatic incidents such as vehicle crashes, murders and other violent and serious crimes. These incidents can affect employees’ mental and physical health, often leading to post-traumatic stress symptoms, depression and suicide.

To mitigate such incidents, the SAPS has implemented a number of programs and effective prevention strategies such as the Mental Health and Suicide Management Strategy. The Key Focus areas of this strategy are amongst others: Psychological Assessments and Evaluations, Mental Health Risk Assessments and Mitigation, Mental Health Stakeholder engagement and management, SAPS employee empowerment and resilience building through workplace programs. Emphasis of the Summit was on the importance of conducting Psychometric Assessments to ensure that sound and healthy employees are recruited into the organization and the provision of debriefing and counselling sessions within 48 hours of attending traumatic incidents to members. SAPS employees were also empowered on how to cope with stress and to how to access services offered to them by internal and external Mental Health care providers.

By assisting employees in their search for coping and dealing with stressful situations, and to bring about awareness on suicide and mental health issues, the SAPS aims to intensify its efforts to reach out to both members and their immediate family members, by offering more programmes targeting Mental Health issues such as Depression and Bipolar programmes, events that lead to or trigger multiple stressors in an individual, Suicide Prevention, Debriefing Services and Counselling.

Some of the attendees of the two-day summit shared their experienced as follows:

Constable Malebo Sefala is stationed at Tembisa SAPS and she says the two-day summit was really helpful and will assist her to cope with day to day challenges in the work place.

“This session is helpful because I attend many traumatic scene and this session has assisted me with advice and how to react and face challenges around the working environment”.

Lieutenant Colonel Hezekial Motha a forensic analyst based at the Forensic Sciences Laboratory in Pretoria also shared his views as follows;

“In my field, I am exposed daily to traumatic scenes all I can advise to every police officer is to seek for help through our Employee Health and Wellness (EHW)Unit and attend debriefing sessions”.

In closing, the Deputy National Commissioner (DNC) responsible for Support Services, Lieutenant General Franscinah Vuma urged all in attendance to attend debriefing sessions regularly in order to ensure that members are always mentally ready to respond to incidents.

“We are well aware of the risk at hand in terms of your mental health and that’s why it is important to prioritize your well-being. Your day-to-day enforcement duties often put you in potentially unsafe situations, as well as expose you to traumatic sessions. We know that you are trained to see yourselves as problem solvers, not people with problems but we are here as management to remind you that, you are also human. We plead with you to attend the debriefing sessions regularly or to use your medical aids to seek external help. We will be meeting with all commanders regularly to equip them with knowledge that will assist them as well as their own members in curbing mental illness” concluded, Lt Gen Vuma.

The Employee Health and Wellness (EHW) is a component within the SAPS and employs experts in four support professions including Chaplains, Psychological Service staff, Social Work Services and Occupational Health Practitioners.  It currently boasts 604 practitioners nationwide and its services are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for members.

Source: South African Police Service