‘Prolonged duty hours, poor living conditions, and separation from family are among factors that contribute to their stress’.
Many psychiatrists, mostly based in the national capital region, have said that mental health issues may be much more severe and widespread among the police forces than what the Union Ministry of Home Affairs data has revealed. And that is not because the state and central police forces do not have a regular evaluation of their mental issues; but many among them shun the free services available under their individual forces, fearing a permanent blot on their career profile.
SEEKING HELP OUTSIDE
Dr Hemika Agrawal, Consultant Psychiatrist at Fortis Hospital, Noida, who meets a lot of patients from the security forces, told The Sunday Guardian: “Because of departmental rules, they shun the free services allocated to them to be treated when faced with such issues.”
“All these para military and police forces have institutionalised processes to treat stress or mental health of their men and women and these are free of cost—CGHS and empanelled services. However, despite that, they take help from outside as inside the forces, the treatment provided automatically reflects permanently in their records, hurting their chances of promotion. Once they opt for such psychiatric consultation, the personnel are given desk duty and taken off the field,” said Agrawal, whose long list of young patients from the police forces include the Central Reserve Police Force, Central Armed Police Forces, besides Delhi Police and state police services of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, and even Jammu and Kashmir.
FATAL OUTCOMES
As far as the police and security personnel are concerned, their job profile has in-built stress, V.S.K. Kaumudi, Special Secretary (Internal security) in the Ministry of Home Affairs and Secretary (Security) in Cabinet Secretariat Government of India shared in the Indian Police Journal sometime back while he was serving as the DG of the Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D).
The normal routine of the police involves dealing with lawbreakers, angry and unruly mob, managing, unruly traffic, dealing with dangerous law and order situations, besides anti-Naxal, anti-terrorism and anti-insurgency operations. All these jobs are highly demanding involving threat to life, Kaumudi wrote in IPJ 2019, that clearly explains the new data by the MHA in Parliament which says that in two years, psychiatric cases in paramilitary has gone up by 38%.
Sharing the break-up of 658 suicides since 2018 to 2022, Union Minister of State for Home, Nityanand Rai, said 230 personnel took their lives in CRPF, 174 personnel in BSF, 91 personnel in CISF, 65 personnel in SSB, 51 personnel in ITBP and 47 personnel in Assam Rifles.
NOT AMONG PRIORITY GROUP
Now juxtapose their number to the state policing units, where the youngest are as old as class 12 passout. Prolonged duty hours, poor living conditions, separation from family, inability to attend social obligations and many more such factors contribute to their stress which later could convert into mental illness, explained Dr Jateen Ukrani, Consultant Psychiatrist at The Lifestyle Clinic, Delhi.
“Governments are taking measures to reduce the stress level and promote the well-being of police personnel through responsive grievance redressal mechanisms, relaxation exercises, yoga, meditation, and liberal sanction of leave,” Ukrani told The Sunday Guardian, adding that he himself has been part of several such workshops for these personnel.
Both Agrawal and Ukrani bat for a monthly—or even three monthly—evaluation of every individual in these forces and absolutely all those who handle arms and ammunition. So many cases of mental health of personnel go undetected as there is no mechanism yet for any compulsory regular check-up as is there in the Army, Navy, Air Force, BSF, said both Dr Agrawal and Dr Ukrani.
CHECKS AND MEASURES
These issues when long drawn can have many repercussions in their lives and sometimes even force them to take severe steps, like committing suicide, succumbing to the chronic stress and failing mental health, said Ukrani, who gets to treat at least 3 to 4 such cases every month, ranging from the junior-most to sub inspector level, sometimes even DSPs besides a lot of constables and whose average age group ranges between 35 to 45.
BEAT COPS
Back in a 2019 editorial of the IPJ, ADGP V.H. Deshmukh mentioned that the chronic job stress among the uniformed personnel is not only affecting sleep, metabolism, hormones and the vital body parts, but also compelling them to become inefficient, developing bellicose relations with the staff and seniors due to hypertension and hormonal imbalances and many discipline-related issues.
“The fitness of the nation hinges on the well-being of the uniformed personnel who are responsible to safeguard not only our borders with neighbouring countries from infiltration by the non-state actors, but also to devise mechanism in maintaining law and order and securing peace internally,” he added. At home, there is a real need to improve ratio per lakh people for policing, as we see random crisis emerging states over political or communal issues, be it West Bengal, Bihar, Haryana, or Manipur.
STIGMATISED
Dr Agrawal pointed out these men and women are 24X7 in high-stress jobs, they shoulder huge responsibilities and are always held answerable. “They always face the possibility of being made scapegoats if a crisis appears. And most of these personnel are the regular ones, not the IPS, the junior level ones,” she said. Most of those who land these services are physically well built and young. Appearance makes a major difference – they are mostly youth. These are mostly those who are Classes 10-12 passed and they attach a lot of stigma to declaring their medical condition, fearing demotion, said Dr Agrawal. “It is a failure of the system to have not been able to give them the required confidence to climb out of that mental setup where both physical and mental health are treated equally.”
FEEL AND HEAL
Just like the Army, Navy and Air Force and other border security forces, these regular central, state and railways also the industrial security forces, who cater to the largest ratio of the population must have regular mental checkups, the doctors added. “While I would not want to comment on the train shooting as it is under probe, I must say that we need to learn from these recurring patterns of tragedies though. If we sleep peacefully at night, it is because these men and women remain on duty, so their mental health should be of priority to both forces and the government.”
It should not just be confined to awareness camps to remove the stigma around mental health but there must be regular clinical evaluation, says Agrawal. “Just like if one has a fracture it’s not the individual’s fault, so also the mental breakdown. It could be chemical disturbance, or stress. Seeking help in such a situation is a sign of strength and not of weakness.”
NEED OF THE HOUR
Senior psychiatrist Dr Paramjeet Singh, a consultant with Delhi Mind Clinic and PSRI Hospital, said: “Mental health needs to catered to much better. If you realise, in the West, the psychological, psychometric, psychiatric assessment of their police personnel is very common. Here, apart from the stigma, the avenues of seeking help are also limited for the Indian cop. We also need to get over the stigma of treating one seeking help as a lesser human being with limited potential as a lesser professional. I think we need to get over and out of this ostracisation for them to seek help.” He said society is as much at fault in letting the situation reach a breaking point for many in the services. “End of the day, our mentality towards policemen has been negative. They are judged harshly as a community even in the case of a rotten apple. They never get as much respect as other professionals.
That brings about a negative attitude in the policeman’s mind, that despite fulfilling his duty he is nothing but a cop, who can be corrupt. He is fighting a negative bias every day. So, overtime, there has been a chronic demoralisation in the forces. So then comes deflection, dereliction of duty, feeling of unwell.”