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Mary Ann Benitez

Police could be more prone to suicides because they are less likely to seek help, experts said yesterday.
An inquest was told on Thursday that 31 officers had committed suicide in the past five years.
Brian Mishara, director of the Centre for Research and Intervention on Suicide and Euthanasia and professor of psychology at University of Quebec at Montreal who has studied police suicides, said police were trained to solve problems by themselves.
'They are trained to do that,' he said. 'They are not trained to wait when you see a robbery and consult and ask what to do. So what happens is not to seek help when they have problems.'
Professor Mishara, in Hong Kong to attend a suicide prevention conference, said  prevention programmes would help officers cope.
'The emphasis is to encourage them and assure them that there is help available and to seek help with their personal problems;  not react like they're on the job,' he said.
He said such programmes had been successful in Montreal. There were 36 suicides in the 19 years before 2000, when a suicide prevention programme was launched. In the eight years since then, there had been only two.
Chinese University professor of psychiatry Lee Sing agreed that police officers would be more reluctant to seek professional help.
'They are more sensitive as a profession to the effect of social stigma because their role is to protect others,' he said. 'If they are known to seek help from psychiatrists, the adverse impact of social stigma would be more marked than an ordinary citizen.'
He said that, particularly in Hong Kong, police officers and others in the disciplined  services were required to have 'perfect mental health'.
'Police officers who have symptoms of depression may be sensitive to colleagues or supervisors knowing about it because it could cost them their job or affect their promotion prospects,'  he said.
The  police force said an average of 182 police officers a year over the last three years sought psychological services assistance - or  0.7 per cent of the 27,000-strong force.  About a quarter of the cases were related to work stress.
Professor Lee said the availability of guns could also be a risk factor.
'One of the major risk factors is the proximity to a legal means of suicide: they have guns,' he said. 'Research has shown, for example in the US, the most common method of suicide by men is by shooting themselves.'
A sub-group of officers also appeared prone to being pathological gamblers, which could trigger suicides.
'Finally, if a society is unstable because of financial, social or political problems, we expect more workload on police officers and higher expectations of them,' Professor Lee said.
Life saver
Before Montreal launched a suicide prevention programme, 36 police had killed themselves in 19 years
In the eight years since then, the number of suicides has dropped to just: 2



Officers less likely to seek help, say experts