Submitted on Sunday 30th July 2023
Rejected on Tuesday 22nd August 2023
Current status: Rejected
Rejection code: irrelevant (see below for details)
Change the guidance to allow people on antidepressants to join the police
I'd like the 2004 guidance on police recruitment to be updated so that those on antidepressants can join police forces if they are psychologically stable.
I believe that suggesting those on antidepressants are not suitable to be police officers is counter productive. It potentially prevents those looking at the police force as a career from getting help if they need it. It follows the outdated idea that those on antidepressants are in some way unstable or not resilient, which is not true. Assessing mental resilience in the medical assessment would be better than making judgements about people on the basis of their prescription.
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The Government e-Petitions Team gave the following reason:
We can only accept petitions about things the Government or Parliament are directly responsible for.
There is no Home Office guidance which explicitly advises against accepting recruits being treated for antidepressants or for a period after stopping them. Police are operationally independent of the government and recruitment decisions are for forces to make on a case-by-case basis. Decisions about frontline policing, which includes police recruitment, are for Chief Constables and Police and Crime Commissioners, not the Government or Parliament.
18.116.28.246 Mon, 20 May 2024 03:16:24 +0100
