Assessment of Mental Health and Well-being of Police and Auxiliary Police Officers Who Bear Arms

13 Mr Zhulkarnain Abdul Rahim asked the Minister for Home Affairs whether there are precautionary measures taken on a continual basis to assess the state of mental health and well-being of Police and Auxiliary Police Officers who bear arms in the course of their duties, particularly those who have front-facing duties with members of the public.

14 Dr Shahira Abdullah asked the Minister for Home Affairs (a) from 2019 to date, how many Police officers have sought help from their unit for mental health challenges; (b) what is the process for Police Officers to seek help (i) within their unit and (ii) from other resources within SPF; and (c) what initiatives are in place to destigmatise help-seeking, given the fear of discrimination and unconscious biases relating to promotional prospects in a high-performing environment.

15 Dr Shahira Abdullah asked the Minister for Home Affairs (a) what support measures are given to Police officers to access external counselling service providers to alleviate stigma from seeking internal counselling support; and (b) whether such support extends to other first responders including paramedics and military staff.

The Minister of State for Home Affairs (Ms Sun Xueling) (for the Minister for Home Affairs): Mr Speaker, Sir, may I have your permission to answer Question Nos 13, 14 and 15 in today's Order Paper?

Mr Speaker: Yes, please.

Ms Sun Xueling: Mr Speaker, my response will cover the matters raised in the questions by Mr Zhulkarnain Abdul Rahim, Dr Shahira Abdullah and Mr Melvin Yong, who had asked similar questions yesterday, which we have given a written answer to.

Between January 2018 and September 2022, 74 uniformed officers in the Home Team passed away while in service. The majority of these deaths were due to illnesses or natural causes. Eight deaths were ruled as suicide. The cause of death for three others, which had elements to suggest possible suicide, are pending coronial investigations.

With regard to mental health, Home Team officers are provided with avenues of support from the time they join the Home Team. Resilience and stress management training is provided to all new officers. We provide training on detection of personal distress and this includes suicide prevention. Staff feedback is collected through regular staff engagement and pulse surveys, and the concerns raised include issues which officers may face in the workplace. Home Team supervisors are trained with the skills to identify and support officers who need help. This approach and culture have been built over several years.

Across the Home Team departments, in-house psychological services are made available to officers, including first responders. Psychologists in the Home Team departments attend to the mental health needs of the officers.

Peer support programmes, such as para-counsellors, have also been implemented in Home Team departments to provide care and support. For the Singapore Police Force (SPF), there is also a 24/7 helpline managed in-house by our psychologists and SPF senior para-counsellors. We have another external agency-administered 24/7 helpline which is available to all Home Team officers.

The Home Team makes external counselling services available to all our officers, including frontline officers. The aim is to make it easier for them to access external help. This is confidential and anonymous, and we do not track who attends these services. The external counsellors will activate emergency services if they assess that there could be a threat of harm by the officers to themselves, or to others.

The Police do not track the number of officers who have sought counselling or para-counselling assistance. Officers are not required to report their engagement of such assistance as the confidentiality of help-seeking is important to encourage officers with problems to come forward. Officers who seek help are not specifically disadvantaged in their career because they had sought help. They are assessed on their on-the-job performance and their promotion is based on merit and their potential to assume higher appointments.

SPF psychologists try and demystify the myths and stigma of help-seeking during their regular mental health outreach to all Police officers. There is increased outreach every October, in line with World Mental Health Day, to build awareness of the importance of mental health and to encourage help-seeking.

Where the bearing of firearms is concerned, all Police officers and Auxiliary Police Officers (APOs) undergo security vetting before employment. Medical and psychological assessments are conducted as part of the recruitment exercise for the SPF and for most of the Auxiliary Police Forces (APFs).

Supervisors engage officers to check on their well-being. Officers are also encouraged to alert their supervisors if they think their peers may need help. If officers are assessed at any point to be unsuitable to carry firearms, they will not be issued with firearms and will be redeployed to other duties to allow them to settle down and recover from whatever strains they may be facing.

We will continue to strengthen the support for the mental health and well-being of officers in the Home Team and the APFs but we will also require the help of family and friends, of officers in the Home Team and the APF as these family and friends may be in most frequent contact with the officers and are best able to detect changes in moods, in dispositions and be most sensitive to life events happening to these officers.

Mr Speaker: Mr Zhulkarnain Abdul Rahim.

Mr Zhulkarnain Abdul Rahim: Thank you, Sir. I thank the Minister of State for her answer. It is an important issue, given the recent tragic case.

In a Washington Post article last year, in the US, law enforcement officers are 54% more likely to die by suicide than the average American and they are likely to die by suicide than in the line of duty. We do not want to be faced with a similar situation here in Singapore.

Can the Ministry look into undertaking research and, maybe, coming up with a toolkit, together with other partners or agencies, to address this mental health issue among frontline first responders? It can cover various topics and the culture that the Minister of State mentioned as well. It will also be useful for APOs or other frontline or first responders who may not be familiar with current available help right now.

Ms Sun Xueling: I thank the Member for his question and also his concern for Home Team officers as well as APFs.

The situation in Singapore is different from what the Member has cited regarding the suicide rate of US law enforcement officers.

Every suicide is one too many and I do not wish to trivialise the situation. But our statistics show that the suicide rate among the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) staff is about half that of the Singapore national average.

I thank the Member for his suggestion on having toolkits and building the right culture to seek help and ensuring access to help channels for our officers. In my earlier reply, I had talked about the resilience training, which is conducted for ground officers across the Home Team departments. There are also simplified and easy to use toolkits which will help supervisors identify officers who are in distress. In addition, resources of support are shared regularly with officers through various channels.

Regardless, this is ongoing, very important work to ensure that the mental health of our officers is well taken care of. We will continuously look at various means to encourage destigmatisation of mental health and to provide help channels which are useful to our officers should they require such support.

Mr Speaker: Mr Murali Pillai.

Mr Murali Pillai: Mr Speaker, Sir, I have two supplementary questions for the hon Minister of State.

First, I join the hon Member Zhulkarnain Abdul Rahim in asking whether there has been any study to correlate the suicide cases with any stressors, for example, because of exposure to traumatic incidents, whether the reaction arises from post-traumatic kinds of stresses. Sorry, I am getting ahead of myself. Really, at the end of the day, if we were to identify the psychosocial factors that contribute to such suicides, I think we will be in a better position to prevent suicides in the first place. That is the thrust of my question.

The second question is in relation to harnessing geo-positioning or geo-fencing technology with respect to APOs. I understand that they are being recruited from a wider background and many of them have static duties. So, I wonder whether technology can be harnessed such that if they leave their post and they are bearing arms, there could be some proactivity in managing such situations and, hopefully, prevent any untoward incidents as well.

Ms Sun Xueling: I thank the Member for the two points that he has raised.

On the first point, I had mentioned in my earlier reply that we do conduct surveys to collect staff feedback at regular junctures. We also have regular engagement exercises with our staff officers at various levels, sometimes on very large platforms and sometimes on much smaller platforms.

For instance, for myself, I engage officers over breakfast – sometimes, 10 to 20 people – to hear the tensions they may be facing, the stresses they may be facing, to really get ground-up feedback to get a sense of what they are facing, whether or not it is in their personal lives or whether or not it is what they are facing in terms of their everyday work environment. It is through these engagements that we get a sense of what are some of the stressors that they may be facing.

As I mentioned in my earlier reply, this is continuous, ongoing work. We will need the help of family and friends, because family and friends are often the most connected to these officers and they would know if there were any life-changing events that will throw them off course and lead them to choose a very unfortunate way out. So, this is continuous work in progress.

On the second point the Member mentioned about geo-fencing, we can have a think about it, but I think we do have to balance the need for privacy as well as the needs of the job, but we thank the Member very much for that suggestion.