Question:
Mr Melvin Yong Yik Chye: To ask the Minister for Home Affairs (a) how many Home Team officers have passed away during active service in the past five years; (b) of these, how many are suicide cases; and (c) what is being done to ensure the mental health of our Home Team officers.
Answer:
Mr K Shanmugam, Minister for Home Affairs and Minister for Law:
1. Mr Zhulkarnain Abdul Rahim, and Dr Shahira Abdullah had also asked similar questions scheduled for a future sitting. I will address these questions together with Mr Melvin Yong’s question for a holistic reply.
2. 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.
3. As regards mental health: Home Team officers are provided with avenues of support from the time they join us. Resilience and stress management training are 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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 process for the SPF and for most of the Auxiliary Police Forces (APFs).
10. 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.
11. We will continue to strengthen the support for the mental health and well-being of officers in the Home Team and the APFs.
