The National Police: Improving mental health care for employees

Recently, several items were published in the news regarding the high number of absent personnel among Dutch policemen (NOS, 2016). It is estimated that 4550 of the 65.000, or 7 % of the people that work for the police stay at home each day. This is often due to psychosocial complaints. However, these numbers are a rough estimation, since it is unknown how many police employees receive mental health care through health services outside the police. Thus, the current incidence rate of psychosocial problems is incomplete and there are no reliable numbers. Therefore, the National Police has no complete overview of the mental care-process of its personnel.

Getting an overview of the prevalence, psychosocial problems and the process of mental care leads to the possibility to improve the current mental care system of the national police. Therefore, the main goal of our project is to give a recommendation to the national police on how they can obtain a clear overview of the mental care process of their employees.  Our team will investigate the current mental care process, will assess the cause why it is disorganized and propose a solution to get a clear overview. This overview will include the incidence of mental complaints, but also an overview of who has psychosocial complaints and where they are in the mental care process.IMG_8452