This petition was submitted during the 2019-2024 parliament
Rejected petition 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.
More details
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 It follows the outdated idea that those on antidepressants are in some way unstable or not resilient, which is not true.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.
This petition was rejected
Why was this petition rejected?
It’s about something that the UK Government or Parliament is not directly responsible for.
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.
We only reject petitions that don’t meet the petition standards.