Ambulance crews 'stretched to breaking point' as days of mental illness soar

Sign up for View email from Westminster for expert analytics straight to your inboxReceive our free email View from WestminsterPlease enter a valid email addressPlease enter a valid email addressI would like to receive emails about offers, events and updates day of The Independent. Read our privacy notice{{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}An error has occurred. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Ambulance staff took nearly a quarter of a million mental health-related sick days last year as stressed crews are "stretched to death." breaking point,” according to new figures.

Chronic staffing shortages have put paramedics, technicians and call managers under enormous pressure; ambulance wait times reached their worst on record over the winter and morale plummeted to a new low.

Now the numbers obtained under freedom of information show that in 2022, one in 16 NHS paramedics in England took leave for conditions such as anxiety, stress and depression - the equivalent of 1,100 staff.

The NHS bosses and unions say deteriorating working conditions caused by understaffing are to blame for absences, which have risen by a third since 2020, from 188,134 to 247,711 days lost.

At some trusts, almost a third of staff took at least one mentally ill day off, while long-term sick leave for psychiatric reasons increased by 38% in just two years.

"Increased demand, reduced resources and emergency department queues" have put workers under enormous stress, said Jo Mildenhall, head of psychological health for paramedics paramedics at the College of Paramedics, as she warned the problem could get worse without change.

"Poor mental health, including burnout, trauma and moral injury, is a growing and significant problem, and without additional investment in addressing the causative factors and providing additional interventions and supports, we are likely to see the problem worsen further,” she said.

A total of 6,029 of England's 17,447 workers took mental health leave at the country's nine ambulance trusts in 2022, up from 5,126 in 2020 and 5,958 in 2021. Some 1 243 employees were on long-term sick leave for mental illness last year, an increase from 904 in 2020.

The situation is particularly bad at the South Central Ambulance Service, which covers Hampshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, where 32% of staff took at least one day off because of poor mental health in the last year.

The The second most affected trust was the East of England, with 30% of staff taking unpaid leave...