New law targets mental health in police service

The fight for mental health among police officers has received a major boost after the President assented to the National Police Service Commission (Amendment) Act, 2024.

The law mandates the establishment of psychosocial units and formulation of programmes across all counties to promote the mental wellness of police officers and civilian staff.

The new law, sponsored by Suna West MP Peter Masara as a Private Member’s Bill, is one of the key recommendations from the Justice David Maraga-led taskforce on police and prison reforms, which emphasised the need to address rising cases of depression, suicide, and violence within the ranks.

Under the Act, the National Police Service Commission (NPSC) is now required to establish a counselling and psychosocial support unit to promote mental wellness among police officers and civilian staff.

The unit will offer confidential counselling, trauma recovery, and psychosocial interventions.

This comes as a response to increasing reports of officers taking their own lives or harming colleagues and family members.

Further, the Act decentralises the provision of mental health services, requiring that support centres be devolved to all counties, ensuring that officers across the country can access mental health care.

“The commission, in consultation with the Inspector General, shall provide police officers with mental health and wellness resources and establish well equipped centres in offices, camps, training colleges and communities for police officers to receive psychosocial support in every county,” reads the Act.

Civil society organisations under the Police Reform Working Group have been calling for prioritising of wellbeing and mental health of police officers particularly calling for provision of comprehensive health insurance that also caters for mental health issues.

They reported that between 2016 and 2020, 65 murders and 57 suicides were reported by the National Police Service (NPS), indicating a murder rate of 13 per year and a suicide rate of 11 per year for the service.

The CSOs indicated that in addition to murder-suicides, there has been an increase in public displays of frustration and stress by officers.

Some of the common factors contributing to poor mental health include stress owing to working conditions and nature of work, recruitment and training practices, discrimination and unfair treatment by superiors, involvement in crime, and attitude toward mental illness.

The new law is also a step towards realising the recommendations by the Mental Health Taskforce.

The team led by Dr Frank Njenga recommended the development and implementation of mental health literacy curriculum for the National Police Service, Prison Service and the Kenya Defence Forces by the Cabinet Secretary for Interior, to improve mental well-being among the security agencies.

The Mental Health Task Force Report, 2020, indicates that the mental state of an officer directly affects their behaviour, decision-making and judgment.

Yet the demands of the job, including working for long hours, constant vigilance, and exposure to trauma, often leave the officers emotionally scarred.

From retrieving bodies at accident scenes to enduring shootouts and responding to grisly murders, officers routinely confront the most traumatic moments of human life.

“Security personnel usually offer the first response in emergencies and often experience catastrophic scenes such as injuries and mutilated bodies at accident scenes. Sometimes they get involved in shootouts where people die of bullet wounds,” reads the report.

“Each day in their work day, they stare death in the face. In spite of this, they lack systematic access to treatment and counselling because their training emphasises physicality with little to no emotional preparation for the unsettling circumstances they face on the job,” the report says.