Rising Mental Health Claims Among Tasmanian Police
More than 100 Tasmanian police officers are currently off duty due to mental health compensation claims, a number that has doubled in the past five years. As of February 28, 2026, there were 146 open mental health claims for police officers, with 102 officers entirely off work. This increase highlights a growing concern within the Tasmanian Police force.
The Police Association of Tasmania reported that in 2021, 49 officers were off work on claims due to psychological injury. With approximately 1,450 active police officers, the issue is becoming more significant. Shane Tilley, president of the association since 2023, noted that the figure had increased by 7 per cent under his leadership.
“It is very concerning because not only does it leave those who are behind working to pick up the slack, but it also means that we have a higher number of people who are unwell and who need help,” Tilley said. He emphasized that this problem is not unique to Tasmania, as all state and territory police forces face similar challenges.
National Concerns and Calls for Action
Alan Beckley, an honorary professor at the University of Technology Sydney and a former UK police officer, has conducted extensive research into the mental health of police officers. He said he was not surprised by the Tasmanian statistics.
“You can’t tackle it very simply, it’s got to come from the top all the way down to the bottom, and almost people have got to be retrained to deal with it,” Dr Beckley said. His latest paper examined rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK, finding that increased distress levels, poor sleep quality, hazardous drinking patterns, exposure to trauma, and specific work conditions are significantly associated with heightened PTSD risk.
In 2023, a Tasmanian coroner examined the suicides of four police officers and recommended that Tasmania Police conduct mandatory six-monthly wellbeing screening of all officers for PTSD. However, these checks are not being conducted.
Dr Beckley said a program like this would be beneficial. “It needs to be wholly incorporated into the processes, and it can’t be optional; it must be mandatory,” he said.
Mr Tilley added that more funding would be required for such initiatives. “The community, in my view, would fully support six-to-12-month welfare checks on members; it takes strong people to have the conversation and to convince people like those that sit in Treasury that this is a great idea.”
Support Systems in Place
Tasmania Police has implemented several measures to support its officers. A Wellbeing Support unit conducts checks for officers who work in high-exposure areas such as Crash Investigations, Forensics, and the Coroner’s Office. The workers’ compensation team was incorporated into the unit in 2022 to align the person-centric model with workers’ compensation practices.
Another form of support is the Critical Incident Stress Management Program, which is automatically put in place for all people involved in critical incidents. There are also over 80 psychologists and allied health professionals with contracts to provide services to police officers.
“Continued investment into staff wellbeing initiatives has led to more, not less, staff feeling comfortable to overcome stigma and request help,” a spokesperson said.
Mr Tilley believes Tasmania’s welfare and support system is one of the best in the country. “I actually engage with them for quite a period of time; I was going through a little bit of a dark time … I’ve been an advocate for it since because it brought me back into the right headspace.”
However, he acknowledged that some officers may still be slipping through the cracks. “It’s difficult to know … everyone’s journey is different. When you have a workforce that is stressed through vacancies, through workers’ compensation, illnesses and all the rest of it, the workload doesn’t disappear, it’s just the worker that disappears for one reason or another.”
Compensation Changes and Their Impact
In 2019, workers’ compensation laws were amended in Tasmania so that the cause of the PTSD would be automatically presumed to be work-related for the purposes of a compensation claim. The changes also exempted police officers who are injured while on front-line duty from a decrease in the weekly benefit payment made to an injured worker after set periods of time.
Mr Tilley said this change played a role in making officers feel more comfortable filing a claim. “There is a really, really good argument that police officers generally hid a lot of their sickness and a lot of their demons,” he said. “My personal view is that I think that police in general were more prepared to put their hand up and say, ‘Hey, I’m not well, I need some help and use those services,’ and also knew that they weren’t going to lose salary by doing that.”
A spokesperson for Tasmania Police noted that one outcome of making support more accessible was an increase in the number of compensation claims. In 2024-2025, there were 229 insurance claims made, resulting in a gross incurred cost of $13,757,293. These could include physical or mental health claims, and are across police officers, firefighters, SES staff, and state service employees.
| Year | Insurance Claims | Gross Incurred Cost |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-23 | 198 | $11.24m |
| 2023-24 | 220 | $10.77m |
| 2024-25 | 229 | $13.75m |
In the 2025-26 Revised Estimates Report released in February, an additional $60 million was allocated for the Department of Police, Fire and Emergency Management to meet workers’ compensation premiums.
“We spend millions of dollars a year separating members from emergency services, police services, because they’re unwell,” Mr Tilley said. “Let’s work on bringing that back so that some of that money can be used to do well-being checks on our members.”
